


Raw Materials

by Inkwasher (inkstainedwretch)



Series: Humanoids [2]
Category: Mass Effect
Genre: AU - Synthetic Humanity, Ensemble Cast, F/F, F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-06-12
Updated: 2015-06-12
Packaged: 2018-04-04 00:45:57
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 34,051
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4120339
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/inkstainedwretch/pseuds/Inkwasher
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Just as the weight of Sovereign and the geth began to lift from her shoulders, Commander Shepard woke up in a Cerberus lab with her system wired all wrong, her skin refusing to repair itself, and two whole years gone from her life. Now, with her crew lost and her old friends afraid of her, she doesn’t know where to turn. Humans have been mistrusted by the rest of the galaxy from the very beginning – after all, the last organic human died mere decades after the synthetics were created – but Cerberus? Shepard may as well be flying a geth dropship.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Raw Materials

**Author's Note:**

> Written for the Mass Effect Big Bang 2015. [Art by MizDirected.](http://jarensbud.deviantart.com/art/They-are-going-to-blame-this-on-me-too-539090129?ga_submit_new=10%253A1434084159)

Shepard’s optical sensors came online before she was fully awake. She could see, but she wasn’t awake enough to process what she was seeing. It was all too bright – but that shouldn’t happen anymore; Dr. Chakwas fixed her eyes.

“-showing signs of awareness. I think she’s waking up.”

Who the hell was that? Where _was_ she?

“Damn it, she’s not ready yet. Power her down.”

A woman leaned over her, looking both concerned and annoyed. She tried to reach out to her, but her arm felt loose and uncontrolled.

“Use the master override if you have to.” The strange woman took Shepard’s arm and set it back down. “Power her down. _Now_!”

\--

When Shepard woke up again, it was to the sound of gunfire somewhere in the distance. The woman’s voice – much more agitated now, almost frantic – echoed over the intercom.

“ _Wake up_ , Shepard! This facility is under attack.”

She lifted herself off the table and took stock of her surroundings. Her body felt _strange_ , like she’d been gutted and reassembled with a completely different set of circuits. Everything worked, but it didn’t feel right.

Maybe this was how Joker felt when they’d upgraded the Normandy to install the stealth sys—oh, shit. _Joker_. She’d gotten herself spaced trying to get him off the ship. He _could_ survive separate from the Normandy, but so many of his higher processes were meant to navigate and monitor the ship, she wondered where he was now, if he was still himself.

For that matter, her internal clock was telling her that two damn years had passed since she’d been thrown from the Normandy, and if her main systems were as intact as they currently felt, it shouldn’t have taken half that long to rebuild her body. Something was _wrong_.

“You need to get out of there,” the woman on the intercom was talking to her again. “Keep your wireless connections turned off. Someone’s hacked the mechs and put a virus on the local network. We’ll have to stick to the intercom for now. Get the pistol out of the locker across the room; you’ll need it.”

“Wonderful,” Shepard walked on unsteady legs and took the gun from the locker. It only had a couple of thermal clips stored with it, which meant she couldn’t afford to waste shots. “You want to tell me who I’m talking to?”

“Miranda Lawson. I’m on my way to the hangar. You should have a map of the building in your temporary storage.”

Sure enough, Miranda was right. Not that Shepard had much time to examine it before she had to crouch down behind the nearest piece of equipment. A group of security mechs crowded their way through the door and immediately opened fire. Fortunately, they were nowhere near as durable as they looked.

“Go up the stairs and head right,” Miranda continued. “There should be an elevator at the end of the hallway.”

“Is there a reason my hardware feels different?” Shepard asked. She saw what looked like a still-healing scar on her wrist, glowing faintly from within. “Or why my skin repair programs don’t seem to be working?”

“We had to replace a _lot_ of your internal circuits, and they haven’t fully integrated with your existing hardware. You weren’t supposed to wake up for at least another month.”

“About that,” Shepard jumped behind an air duct and blasted the head off the nearest mech, “since when does it take two whole years to reconstruct someone?”

Miranda’s reply started out garbled before being replaced entirely by static. It came on much too quickly to be anything but a deliberate jamming signal. Shepard swore softly and opened the nearest door to find a man throwing biotic pulls from a glass-paneled walkway.

“Shepard?” He sounded surprised. “If Miranda’s got you running around, we’re in serious trouble.”

“Seems like it, yeah,” Shepard ducked down next to him. “You’ve got me at a disadvantage here.”

“Jacob Taylor. I’ve been working on Project Lazarus for the last couple of years. We were tasked with bringing you back, ma’am.”

“And it took you _two_ _years_ to do it?”

“When you’re rebuilding someone using the same model of hardware as before, it’s not difficult,” Jacob explained. “We wanted to give you a stronger body, more processing capability, that kind of thing. It required converting some of your more basic programs to a newer format.”

“You _what_?” Shepard tried to search her system for any new programming that could be used to control her remotely, or even monitor her system. She couldn’t find anything, but a lot of it felt so new and strange to her that there was no use trying to sort through it all, right now

Behind them, she heard the doors on the opposite walkway open, and before she could ask anything else, she could see Jacob’s eezo capacitors light up beneath his skin. Questions could wait until they’d made it out of this place alive.

\--

 _Cerberus_.

She had to get rebuilt by goddamn Cerberus. The group she’d spent nearly a year tracking down and killing. The group that orchestrated the thresher maw attack on Akuze. The group that corroded Admiral Kahoku’s central processors and then threw his body into a tank full of rachni.

And now, apparently, she was working for them. They were being _nice_ to her. She couldn’t find a single piece of code in her newly-upgraded programming that was potentially harmful. Aside from the skin-repair issue, her new body was twice as sturdy and much more flexible, once she got used to it. They’d even brought Joker in and given them a new Normandy, complete with imports of Joker’s drives salvaged straight from the old Normandy’s crash site. Hell, they’d given Shepard a damn apartment on the top deck. 

But they were still Cerberus. All the shiny new resources couldn’t shake the feeling that she wasn’t safe, and nothing could make her forget the fear in Tali’s eyes when she’d first seen her on Freedom’s Progress. She’d had to bring up the geth data they’d found while chasing Saren just to make Tali believe it was really her, and that nagged at her. She wondered what was going to happen when she found the rest of her crew. For that matter, she wondered if she ever would.

For now, though, they had a goal, a whole list of dossiers, and a plan of action.

>> _Shepard, they gave me a **co-pilot**._

And then there was that.

>I know. Edi Coré, right?

>>That’s her name, yes.

>I’ve talked to her, she’s alright.

>>No. No, she is not. She is not _necessary,_ she is not _helpful_ , and something just isn’t _right_ about her. Have you talked to her in person?

>Not yet, no.

>>You should. Once you see her, you’ll get it.

>Joker, is this seriously that big of an issue?

>> **YES.** Come up to the cockpit, you’ll see what I mean.

Reluctantly, Shepard slid her chair back from her desk and headed down the elevator.

“Joker, didn’t Kaidan used to sit in the—” Shepard’s sentence stopped dead when she got up to the cockpit. Sitting in the co-pilot’s seat was a woman with cropped ash-blonde hair, soft grey eyes, internal temperature of 36.8 degrees Celsius, heart rate of 82, and respiration rate of 16. No visible signs of distress, trauma, or infection.

“…you okay, Shepard?”

Shepard looked incredulously at Joker; wasn’t this what he’d called her up here for? _No,_ she thought, _he was built to pilot the Normandy. He wasn’t fitted with a medical interface_. _He knew something was different, but he didn’t know what_.

Edi turned to face her and smiled politely. “Hello, Shepard. It’s nice to finally meet you face to face.”

“You’re organic. How are you organic?”

“Wait, _what?_ ” Joker wheeled around to face her. “Is that what it is? How are you linked up with the Normandy’s network?”

“I was wondering when one of you would catch on,” Edi, somehow, was the calmest one in the room. “I was created by Cerberus using a process similar to early cloning methods, and I have been trained for several years in advanced navigation and defense techniques. The Illusive Man assigned me to the Normandy specifically for this mission.”

“Has Cerberus been trying to bring back the organic population?” Shepard furrowed her brows. There were some efforts to revive organic humans as a species early on, but they never gained much momentum.

“I don’t think so,” Edi shook her head. “If that was the end goal, much more effort would have been put into making Earth suitable for organic life. I was never told the ultimate purpose of the study that created me, but I think it has more to do with my cybernetics than sustainable organic repopulation.”

An orange holographic visor appeared over Edi’s eyes. She turned her head so Shepard could see the gleaming metal implants the projection emanated from, twined delicately around her ears, just beneath the skin.

“There is a relatively simple set of circuits that was wired into my nervous system early in my development,” Edi explained. “I can access basic communications within the Normandy’s local network, and it enables me to process feedback from the ship’s systems more quickly, but ultimately, I am bound by the limitations of an organic body.”

Shepard didn’t know what the hell to think. On the one hand, the fact that Edi was sitting here talking to her was a damn miracle. On the other, she spoke like she’d learned English from one of the Avina terminals stationed around the Citadel. Then again, if she was essentially raised in a Cerberus lab…

“Wow,” Joker leaned back in his chair. “I guess that explains a lot.”

“…I should go.”

Shepard was out of the cockpit and making her way to the comm room before Joker could say anything else. By the time she heard his noise of dismay, she was halfway down the CIC.

\--

After Shepard had left the cockpit, Edi turned back to her console, feeling tentatively reassured. It had been a risk, not being upfront with this information, especially once she had learned it was her choice whether to disclose it. She had expected Shepard to immediately dismiss her, and although she had not done so, it remained to be seen if Shepard’s quick departure was the result of anger or surprise.

Beside her, Mr. Moreau let his head fall back against his seat with a soft _thud_.

“ _Wonderful_ ,” he muttered.

“Is something wrong?” she asked. He’d made it clear from the beginning that the idea of having a co-pilot didn’t sit well with him, but he hadn’t given any reason why.

“Oh no,” he laughed derisively. “Everything’s just _fine_. It’s not like Cerberus isn’t gonna let me fly my own ship, or anything.”

Edi furrowed her eyebrows. “I don’t see how I’m preventing you from piloting the ship.”

Joker looked at her for a long moment, his eyes narrowed and disbelieving.

“Okay, look,” he began. “I’ll be honest with you. I’ve never met an organic human in my life. By the time I was made, they were all gone. So, I don’t know how much you’ve learned about human history or Cerberus or _what_ , but I’ll tell you this: I don’t need a co-pilot. I’ve got exabytes worth of drive space built into the ship. I don’t just pilot the Normandy, I _am_ the Normandy.”

“I am aware of that,” Edi nodded, “but I don’t see what difference it makes.”

“It means I can’t see any reason for Cerberus to give me a co-pilot other than to make sure I do what they want. They’ve already put software blocks to keep me off the airlocks and the thermal regulators, and I can’t access half of the information drives anymore, and…it feels like they’ve cut off one of my hands. And now they’ve assigned someone to watch me the whole time I’m up here. Not to get started on the wrong foot or anything, but if you want me to trust you, you’re going to have to prove me wrong.”

“You don’t trust Cerberus.”

“Hell no, I don’t trust Cerberus,” he sighed softly, the pneumatic hiss of air so different from the sound of her own breath, “but they’re the only ones who seem to give a shit, anymore…and they gave me back the Normandy. They gave me my drives back, they gave me the rest of my body back – more than anything, they brought Shepard back. I just wish there wasn’t always a catch.”

“I see.” Edi wondered what had happened that made him so skeptical of Cerberus. She made a note to ask Operative Lawson, later. …or maybe Officer Taylor. He seemed more likely to be straightforward with her. Maybe, she considered, it was as simple as getting access to an extranet connection that didn’t run through Cerberus’s network.

\--

Shepard jacked herself into the communication hub and felt the remote access software transport her to the Illusive Man’s office. The network let her in without her having to send so much as a request, which made her wonder if he was expecting her, or if the Normandy’s communications were just prioritized ahead of anything else.

The Illusive Man didn’t seem surprised to see her, but then again he seemed like the sort of person who would deliberately shut down his emotional reaction protocols if needed.

“Shepard,” he began. “Is there something you needed?”

“How many more organic humans do you have working for you?”

“I take it you’ve met your new navigator.”

“Answer. The question.”

“None.”

“You expect me to believe that?”

“I expect you to take down the Collectors, nothing more.” The Illusive Man brought a holo up between them, displaying a still image of a lab not unlike the one Shepard had woken up in.

Instead of a metal table, however, there was a glass-walled tank, fitted on one side with what looked like air filters. Inside of the tank slept a small human girl – Edi, or someone who looked a lot like her. It was jarring; Shepard hadn’t seen a human child since the very end of the plague years.

“It was arduous work,” he continued. “We adapted quarian sterilization methods to keep her alive until we could immunize her well enough to live outside of the lab. It took years after that for her to grow to full maturity, so we could place her cybernetics. Even still, the organic cloning process was essentially a failure.”

“If it failed, why did you put her on my ship?” Shepard was getting irritated now; as glad as she was to have Joker on board with her, she couldn’t help but wonder if he was just here to try and cast a favorable light on Cerberus. The Illusive Man wasn’t doing much to convince her otherwise.

“Edi herself is by no means a failure,” he brought the holo back down. “I placed her onboard the Normandy where she would be most useful. Her performance while linked to the ship’s defense and navigation systems has showed tremendous results.”

“So, what went wrong?”

“Edi was the end product of a project intended to grow organic humans capable of direct infiltration. At present, a flaw in our cell development process has resulted in her body being unsuited for ground work or direct combat. The specifics are classified within her medical record, but to put it simply, she lacks the physical strength.”

“Wait,” Shepard felt a rush of anger heating its way up her spine. The open scars on her skin tingled, like her repair programs had finally realized something was wrong. “She _can’t fight_ , so you thought it would be a good idea to send her through the Omega-4 relay?!”

“Security onboard the Normandy is sufficient to keep her out of significant danger,” the Illusive Man sat back in his chair, unaffected by her anger. “Besides which, she volunteered for this mission. Make no mistake, Shepard; Edi is more than capable of handling herself.”

“You’d better be right.”

“I usually am.”

Shepard disconnected with a visible roll of her eyes. Pompous son of a bitch.

\--

Shepard wasn’t used to having someone standing next to her when she was up in front of the galaxy map, so Yeoman Chambers took some getting used to. There was also the part where she seemed _way_ too nice, like, nicer than Jacob, but Shepard’s main problem had more to do with the new Normandy. The drive core looked completely different, the room behind the med bay now housed most of Joker’s onboard drives, and the armory was _way_ more efficient when it came to weapon upgrades than the old model.

Shepard liked most of the changes, particularly the fact that the elevator moved a lot faster, but she didn’t understand some of them. Why was there a fish tank up in her cabin? What was with the weird sub-deck down in engineering? And above all—

“Where’s the Mako?”

“We don’t have one, commander,” Miranda gave her an amused look. “Our shuttle is precise enough that we don’t have to send you lumbering about in that monstrosity, anymore.”

“You got rid of the Mako?” Shepard stared at her in disbelief.

“I’m sure the one from the Normandy SR-1 is still at the crash site, but we didn’t install a new one.”

“Unbelievable,” Shepard shook her head.

“I did receive a notice regarding the M-44 Hammerhead, if you’d like to—”

“Yeah, flying around in a paper airplane sounds great,” she sighed. “It’s just not the same.”

“There are several things that aren’t the same. Why does this hold such significance for you?”

Shepard was about to answer, but stopped when she remembered who Miranda worked for.

“Are you asking because you’re interested, or are you just gonna report this to your boss?”

Miranda actually laughed at that.

“First of all,” she rose from her chair and came around to lean sideways against her desk, “the Illusive Man wouldn’t care. He’s got bigger problems to deal with. Secondly, if we’re going to be working together, we don’t have to like each other, but things would go a lot more smoothly if we could trust each other.”

“That’s gonna take some work, considering I know nothing about you,” Shepard countered.

“Well, you should probably know that I’ve had extensive modifications. I’m not a product of the Genesis program. My father built me one piece at a time with the best components money could buy, had every line of my code tailored for optimal efficiency and skill. Of course, he counted on being able to control me directly…”

Miranda’s laugh carried a lot less humor, this time.

“That didn’t work out.”

“That sounds like a pretty massive undertaking.” Shepard crossed her arms over her chest, her eyebrows lifted in interest.

“It was. Took him the better part of three years,” she nodded in Shepard’s direction, "just a little longer than it took to rebuild you.”

“I still don’t understand that, actually,” Shepard took a seat on the chair by Miranda’s desk. “I’m a standard first-edition paramedic. If you managed to find my greybox, it shouldn’t have taken you longer than six months to put me back together.”

“The Illusive Man wouldn’t have put me in charge of the project if it were a simple rebuild,” Miranda wasn’t lacking in confidence; that was for sure. “We were tasked with rebuilding you _and_ with making sure damage that extensive didn’t happen again. We wanted your leadership going after the Collectors, and considering the risks, we decided to install reinforcements ahead of time. Your existing hardware was good, but eliminating Saren nearly took your arm clean off.

“We re-fit you with hardware that’s much more durable than anything currently on the public market. Cerberus has its own department for designing upgrades that our operatives can use at their own discretion. Obviously, some of the more advanced hacking programs and weaponry are restricted, but you won’t find any trouble getting what you need.” 

“Is there a way to fix this?” Shepard indicated the scarring on her face.

“We couldn’t find a permanent solution while we were in the reconstruction process,” Miranda looked thoughtful. “It could be a result of the mix of old and new components, but there’s no way to say for sure, right now.”

“Right,” Shepard pinched the bridge of her nose. There seemed to be no straight answers with Cerberus, and she was getting sick of it quickly.

“I’d take that question to the med bay if I were you,” Miranda returned to her desk and gave her a knowing smile, “especially since I don’t believe you’ve been there, yet.”

\--

“Well, goddamn.”

“Good to see you too, Shepard.” Dr. Chakwas turned her chair around to face her.

“What are you doing here, doctor?” Shepard took a seat in the opposite chair, leaning an elbow against the desk.

“The same thing you are,” Dr. Chakwas laughed. “With the Normandy out of commission, the Alliance decided I’d be better off stationed at a hospital. I disagreed.”

“I know what you mean, but _Cerberus_?”

“I don’t work for Cerberus; I work for you.” She leaned back a bit and gave Shepard a pointed smirk. “When the time comes – and I know it will – to ensure that the Normandy is no longer a Cerberus vessel, I’ll be right there with you.”

Shepard let out the first genuine laugh she’d had in weeks. “I just might make it through this, after all.”

“I don’t anticipate it being easy,” Dr. Chakwas raised an eyebrow at her. “I do hope you’ve met our new navigator.”

“I’m still trying to process that one,” she stared at nothing for a moment, remembering the shock of feeling her old search-and-rescue programming surge back to life, like nothing had changed.

“It’s _astounding_. Of all the people to successfully bring back organic human life, it had to be Cerberus.”

“I know,” Shepard shook her head. “The Illusive Man talks about her like…well, kind of like some of the organics used to talk about us, you know?”

“That doesn’t surprise me,” Dr. Chakwas shook her head. “The report Cerberus gave me regarding her medical care read like the maintenance protocols for the new drive core.”

“Well, of all the places she could have ended up, I think she did pretty well, having you as her attending physician.”

“I’m flattered, commander, though it has been an awfully long time since I cared for an organic human.”

“If I know you, you’ll be just fine.” Shepard grinned.

\--

Shepard liked to think that, in most cases, she was a good person. She was designed to help save lives, and now that she was free to do whatever she wanted, she really just wanted to keep saving lives. However, Shepard also recognized that there were some places where you couldn’t be a good person without paying for it.

Omega was one of those places.

Aria T’Loak was beautiful in the same way that a forest fire was beautiful. Her power was as obvious as her existence, and it spelled certain doom to anyone who crossed her. Shepard didn’t necessarily approve of her methods, but on the whole, Aria pissed her off a lot less than the Illusive Man.

Still, the news that the salarian doctor they were looking for was currently treating an active plague was nearly enough to make Shepard throw her arms up and say “fuck this”. She went after Archangel first, since the potential to take out a bunch of mercs sounded like a great way to vent her frustration.

 Then again, throwing the batarian in recruitment straight through the wall looked pretty appealing, too. The fact that starting a fight that big would’ve been a _huge_ waste of time was just about the only reason she didn’t bother. Joker and Dr. Chakwas were welcome anchors in this strange, duplicitous sea of new faces, but working with Miranda and Jacob at her back felt just different enough to be wrong. 

She opened fire on the rest of the freelancers the instant they crossed the barricade. They were some of the worst shots she’d ever faced, which made her wonder how old they were. They were almost all human – one of them _might_ have been asari, but she died too quickly for Shepard to tell. She thought back to the would-be freelancer outside the recruiting station, obviously less than a week post-build. Who the hell had the resources to build themselves a kid on this station?

 Less than a full three minutes after they’d entered Archangel’s hideout, the last of them dropped to the ground, and the doors to the top level swished open.

“Archangel?”

He turned to face her, setting his rifle down. For some reason, Shepard hadn’t expected him to be turian, but it made sense. Then he lowered his helmet, and Shepard swore she could _hear_ her processors stutter.

“Shepard,” Garrus grinned at her. “It’s been too long.”

“Garrus!” Shepard felt the circuit board on the back of her neck start to cool down for the first time in days. “God, it’s good to see you, again.”

“Same to you,” Garrus nodded. “Last I heard, you were dead.”

“Not quite,” Shepard chuckled. “What the hell are you doing taking out mercs on Omega?”

“It’s been a long two years, Shepard,” he turned his gaze back down to the bridge below. “A lot longer than I’m used to.”

“We’re getting a team together to take out the Collectors, going through the Omega-4 relay,” Shepard took a few steps forward and put a hand on his arm. “Will you join us?”

“A chance to follow the great Commander Shepard straight into hell?” Garrus turned to face her. “Wouldn’t miss it for the world.”

Below them, Eclipse mechs began filing in.

“But first, we’ve got a bit of housecleaning to do.” Garrus crouched by the window and took aim. Shepard knelt beside him, feeling her targeting software respond twice as quickly as it had twenty minutes ago. They fell into their old rhythm, Garrus aiming towards the back while Shepard took care of anything that got too close, without having to say a word.

\--

Edi was in the med bay taking her weekly medication, when a great crashing sound came from outside. The door slid open to reveal Shepard and Jacob carrying an unconscious turian man between them. The right side of his face shone with medi-gel, beneath which she could see dark blue smears of blood.

“My god, is that Garrus?” Dr. Chakwas was up in an instant, flinging the cabinets open and removing medi-gel and a surgical kit. Edi scrambled out of the way as they hauled him in and set him down on an exam table.

“Yeah, it’s him,” Shepard began unlatching the turian’s armor, exposing burns and blood most of the way down his neck. “Come on Garrus, stay with me. Damn it, I just found you an hour ago, I am not gonna lose you again–”

“Shepard,” Dr. Chakwas interrupted her, her voice sharp but clear as she handed her a thick cloth bandage. “Hold pressure on the wound while I get the surgical kit open.”

Edi felt rather useless, standing petrified as Shepard and Dr. Chakwas worked on closing the wound. They didn’t speak another word, probably because they were communicating directly through a network connection. She saw Jacob leave and head towards Miranda’s office, most likely to draw up a report.

She had done a bit of research on the Normandy, as well as the crew she would be working with, before she officially began her assignment. She knew that Shepard had been a paramedic on Earth during the plague years, and that she and Dr. Chakwas had worked in the same hospital, but it was another thing entirely to see them working together. Their hands moved incredibly quickly, and though turian medicine wasn’t her area, she could tell that they knew exactly what they were doing.

Before long, they had the wounds closed and dressed. Shepard fastened his armor back on and then took a seat on the other exam table. There was worry in her eyes, and after a moment, Edi realized why the name “Garrus” had sounded familiar.

“Is this Garrus Vakarian, then?” She asked. “The turian who served on the Normandy SR-1?”

“The very same,” Shepard nodded. “How long’s that sedative supposed to last, doc?”

“It’s not very long-acting,” Dr. Chakwas replied. “He should be awake in a few minutes. The pain killers will last a bit longer.”

The room was silent for a while. Edi wondered if she should leave, but she was curious about their new crew member – because by this point, it was clear that the Archangel they had been tasked with finding was in fact Garrus. It made sense, considering all record of him had vanished since he left the Citadel quite a while ago.

Eventually, Garrus began to stir. He blinked, clutched at the side of his head, then felt the bandage covering his face.

“ _Spirits_ ,” he slurred. “Shepard?”

“Right here, Vakarian,” Shepard slid down from the table and walked over to him.

“Where’m I?”

“Back on the Normandy. Dr. Chakwas and I patched you back up.”

 “Well,” Garrus seemed to be waking up a bit more. “Makes sense. I’ve pulled your ass out of the fire enough times already. We’re almost even.”

“Please,” Shepard smirked at him, “if I let _one_ rocket to the face take you out, I might as well just give up right now. Although, you might want to brace yourself before you look in a mirror.”

 “Oh no,” Garrus brought a hand up to his bandages, again. “How bad is it?”

“Hell, Garrus, you were always ugly. A little face paint, and I doubt anyone will be able to tell the difference.”

Garrus laughed aloud, followed shortly by a sharp cough.

“Oh, _ow_ , don’t make me laugh.”

“Get some rest,” Shepard gave his uninjured shoulder a pat. “Soon as you’re up for it, we’re gonna go hunt down a plague doctor.”

“It might be a couple of hours,” Garrus laughed a bit less loudly. It seemed to hurt less, this time.

“I’m counting on it.”

With that, Shepard left, and from the looks of it, Garrus fell asleep. Edi looked over at Dr. Chakwas, who by now had returned to her desk and was charting away at her terminal. Edi looked between her and Garrus a few times before finally speaking.

“How long has it been since you and Shepard worked on a patient together?”

“Together? Good lord, it’s been ages.” Dr. Chakwas answered. “Shepard hasn’t done anything more advanced than apply medi-gel since the plague years. Truth be told, I think she avoided it on purpose. She doesn’t much like remembering her old job.”

“I never would have guessed,” Edi looked back at Garrus, who was definitely asleep now. “She was working faster than any medic I’ve ever seen.”

“Shepard is willing to make a lot of exceptions when it comes to her crew,” the doctor smiled a bit wistfully. “For Garrus? She wouldn’t have let anyone else _try_.”

\--

The plague on Omega was nasty, but it wasn’t as bad as Shepard had feared. Yes, the district under quarantine looked like a fucking wreck, but she was pretty sure that had more to do with it being Omega than the actual plague. The disease the Collectors had come up with looked like it took longer to progress than the organic plague had, which gave this doctor Solus a decent shot at engineering a cure.

Unfortunately, none of that made her any less uncomfortable inside the clinic. The patients were slouched in chairs and cured up on stretchers, coughing and shivering and hissing in pain, and she was here to take away their only shot at getting better? She could get into the unforgiving numbers game of how many lives the plague would claim vs. the Collectors, but she didn’t think it would make her feel any better. 

Thankfully, Mordin had a cure finished and ready to disperse. (If he hadn’t, Shepard might have left and come back in a few days. It wasn’t like she didn’t have a hundred other things that needed doing.) She was surprised, at this point, that the Blood Pack had anyone left to fight them after she and Garrus had taken so many of them out. They hadn’t run out of rocket launchers or flamethrowers, either.

Shepard felt no small thrill when they found Daniel, surrounded by batarians looking for vengeance, or maybe just for answers. It wasn’t until they were leaving, when he turned to thank them again for saving him, that Shepard recognized the marks on his shoulder. A small red cross was printed on his uniform, faded with time, an identifying symbol that had become obsolete decades ago.

“You’re a doctor?” Shepard asked, hoping he understood what she meant. Clearly, he was a doctor now, but you didn’t get that mark on your uniform unless it was what you were built to do.

“I am,” he nodded, “though it’s been a long time since I practiced. When our plague ended, I didn’t know what to do with myself. I felt lost, useless. Mordin helped me realize there’s still some good I can do.”

Shepard glanced back at the clinic, still full of patients that needed time to recover. Since she woke back up, it seemed there was a lot more good that needed to be done, and too few people willing to do it.

“Try not to forget that,” she finally said. Daniel nodded again, his eyes bright with reckless optimism, and she finally felt alright about taking Mordin with her. The clinic would be in good hands.

\--

The black dress Kasumi had procured for her was soft, supple. If it was faux leather, it did a damn good job of pretending it wasn’t. That still didn’t mean it was comfortable pressed between her skin and the inside of her armor, but there was only so much room under that statue.

Truth be told, Shepard almost preferred focusing on the discomfort of her outfit than Kasumi’s tear-streaked face, reflected dimly in the window. Kasumi was still, quiet, and Shepard couldn’t tell if her tears were joyous or anguished. There was no way for her to guess if Keiji’s greybox was really as intact as it had looked, if there was a chance that he could be made whole again.

Finally, the lights on the side of the small, vital data drive faded, and Kasumi held it close to her heart.

“He’s still in there, Shep,” she whispered. “Hock’s been trying to crack him open this whole time. But he stayed strong, just like I knew he would.”

“I’m glad I could help get him back.”

“Don’t worry about me skipping out on you,” Kasumi continued. “Hock didn’t manage to break him, but there’s a lot of junk code in there I’ve got to get out before we can attach him to a new body…but just in case, I might call that engineer on Illium that owes me a favor.”

“That big of a favor?” Shepard raised an eyebrow. A complete re-build from a greybox alone wasn’t exactly routine, nor was it inexpensive.

“I met her on a job, lifting intel from one of those ‘indentured service’ companies. Poor girl was sold into it by her employer. It’s nasty, the stuff Illium will do to quarians on Pilgrimage.”

“So, you stole her along with the intel?”

“Sure did,” Kasumi nodded. “I’ll still need to get all of the materials myself, but that shouldn’t be a problem.”

“Kasumi…” Shepard warned.

“Don’t worry, Shepard. I already know your ship and its crew are off-limits.” She laughed softly. “Once we dock, however, I can’t make any promises.”

\--

“What the hell is the point of keeping a human in cold storage?” Shepard muttered, watching as Jack’s cell opened on the other side of the glass.

“Cryogenic holding cells were standard long before humans showed up to the party,” Garrus shrugged. “If I had to guess, it’s just the way they’ve always done things.”

“There’s also the fact that moving too quickly before your circuits warm up is a good way to tear something,” Miranda added.

The three of them watched as the fumes dissipated to reveal a woman with skin like a canvas, painted from the neck down with tattoos.

“That’s Jack?” Garrus asked softly.

Jack wasn’t slow to wake up; after a second’s worth of stirring, eezo capacitors flared to life under the skin of her arms. To Shepard’s surprise, they didn’t stop there. Instead, they seemed to follow the borders and shadows of her tattoos, lighting them up like a galaxy’s worth of constellations all the way down her body.

“Holy _shit_ ,” Shepard whispered.

That shouldn’t have been possible. Giving humans biotic potential hadn’t been easy, but they’d gotten it down to a science by now. Capacitor installation had rules, and the first rule of human biotics was Never Overclock Yourself. Any more tech than the standard arms-and-amp setup, and people started exploding.

Jack tore through her restraints without any hesitation, and from the sounds coming from below them, she didn’t stop there. She moved insanely fast, leaving a trail of destruction behind her that was easy to follow – provided they could get through the security officers trying to gun them down.

The guards were ruthless, but so were the prisoners. With every automated announcement that came over the station loudspeakers, another cell block lost power. Hundreds of people were dying, either through a failed generator or the warden deliberately shutting off life support. By the time they’d taken him out, Shepard felt the same sick feeling she’d had at Mordin’s clinic. She was doing more harm than good, and it grated at her.

So yeah, when Jack said she wanted access to Cerberus’s files, she didn’t hesitate for a second before agreeing to it. When she found her in the sub-deck under engineering, she had datapads scattered around her bed, idly scrolling through one of them.

“Hey,” she said, much calmer than she’d been an hour beforehand. “Thanks for letting me see these.”

“Are you finding anything useful?”

“Yeah, but I’ve still got a lot to sort through.” Jack paused and then looked up at Shepard, a faint smile tugging at her mouth. “Figured you’d be down here sooner or later. Before you ask, I’m not about to start blowing holes in your ship. I’ve been around long enough to know what the hell I’m doing.”

She held up a hand, blue lights glowing all the way up her fingers. They were dimmed, barely even there, and then dark again. It was hardly the fireworks display she’d given off on Purgatory, and the fact that she could do it so casually meant that there was some incredibly detailed code worked into her system.

“Works for me,” Shepard nodded. “What kind of history do you have with Cerberus, anyway?”

“I’m still finding out,” she gestured to the datapads scattered around her. “They tried to tell me they built me, but that’s bullshit. The first record on my greybox – you know, where your initial startup memories go? Scrubbed. Can’t do shit with it.”

“Scrubbed? That’s not –”

“Not supposed to be possible, I know. Well, it fucking is. First thing I remember is waking up with a shit-ton of eezo shoved into my system. Second thing I remember is waking up again a week later with a brand new amp. The first one burned out as soon as I opened my eyes.” 

Jack leaned back against the wall and gave a humorless laugh.

“Took them four tries to get that right.”  

There was an uncomfortable pause, during which Shepard took stock of the hideout Jack had crafted for herself. She hadn’t come onto the ship with much more than the clothes on her back, but there were a couple of boxes at the foot of her bed that looked like they were hers.

“You know, you don’t have to stay down here,” she finally said.

Jack stood up and walked back toward the vent pipe coming down from the drive core. She leaned against it, propping one foot on the wall behind her.

“I like being right under the drive core.” She turned her head away from Shepard, becoming little more than shadow by the soft light from the vent. “Gives me an extra power source if anyone’s ever stupid enough to attack me.”

Jack was grinning, but Shepard could tell she wasn’t joking. This woman was _completely_ unstable. On her way back up the stairs, Shepard wondered if every asset Cerberus gave her was going to come with this big of a catch.  

\--

>>Screw it. I’m gonna open this thing up. 

>Got one finger on the alarm, just in case.

Joker pulled the pressurization controls for the cargo bay up on his display. It still grated at him that he had software blocks keeping him out of some of the most important systems, but he was so grateful to have the Normandy back at all, he could almost live with it. 

 _This must be what organics feel like_ , he thought. _Having to access the computer through a keyboard and a monitor._ _Speaking of which…_

Beside him, Edi tapped through the main camera feeds on her terminal screen. She had her neural interface switched off, and she looked a bit bored. Not that he could blame her, really. It was a slow shift, so obviously Shepard’s form of entertainment was unleashing a potentially murderous krogan on a ship flying through space.

“Check the port cargo feed,” he suggested. “Shepard’s about to open the tank.”

“By herself?” Edi sat up straighter, switching her display over. On the screen, the nutrient liquid began to drain into the base of the tank. Shepard stood still, her feet turned just enough to brace her against the floor.

It didn’t seem to do much good. Once the doors of the tank were open, the krogan charged at her, pinning her to the wall with an arm at her throat.

“We have to get someone down there,” Edi turned her neural implants back on, getting ready to issue a distress call until Joker leaned over towards her.

“Not yet,” he indicated the screen, “look at her other hand.”

Sure enough, Shepard had taken her sidearm in with her, and even as she negotiated with the krogan, convinced him that he needed to keep her alive, she had the barrel of her gun pointed right into his side. At point blank, it would pierce his armor without any trouble.

After a minute, the krogan took notice of it, but rather than start a fight, he laughed and let Shepard go. The two of them seemed to come to an accord, however tenuous. Joker couldn’t believe that actually worked. There was a long pause before Edi spoke, again.

“That was a _risky_ move.”

Joker laughed aloud.

“I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but risky moves are sort of Shepard’s specialty.”

“Clearly,” Edi leaned back, turning off her interface, again. She looked smaller, somehow, even though Joker knew she was taller than him. The muscles on the side of her face were tight and drawn.

And here’s where Joker started feeling awkward as hell, again. He didn’t treat Edi differently than anyone else while they were working, but every now and then, something would happen that threw the differences between them into focus. Like now, as she brought a hand up to massage one of her temples and it reminded him that usually, organics never even _tried_ to connect their brains directly to a network.

“Does it hurt?” He asked. “When you’re linked up for too long, I mean.”

“No,” Edi shook her head. “It is…tiring, but not painful. The Normandy’s system is the optimal size for my cybernetic interface to manage, but it can become disorienting when I am working inside the network for an extended period of time.”

“Wait, optimal? How did they test that?” Joker admittedly didn’t know much about organic humans, but he did know you couldn’t just take a performance reading through a cable like you could with synthetics. Or maybe they could. He didn’t know how Cerberus worked.

 “After my cybernetics were successfully integrated with my central nervous system, most of my initial training was done using simulators. The study team was uncertain whether spaceflight was safe,” she paused here, like she was considering something, and then continued. “My first assignments piloting actual vessels began with shuttlecraft and advanced gradually in size. Attempting to access the system of any ship bigger than a frigate produced negative effects.”

“What does that mean?” Joker was starting to get _really_ uncomfortable, mostly because he couldn’t really tell what she was thinking. She was so…closed off, and not just because she wasn’t linked to the Normandy, anymore. “Did the software glitch on you, or what?”

“Not quite,” Edi’s eyes looked distant. “In the beginning, the side effects were limited to headaches and occasional epistaxis, but on one occasion, I began to have trouble speaking and lost consciousness. There was no permanent damage, but tests involving larger ships were discontinued.”

There was a long pause, which Edi seemed to interpret differently than Joker. She began to nervously massage the skin between her thumb and forefinger. Now that he really looked, Joker could see synthetic reinforcements under the skin of her hands, moving subtly with her joints. Why would she need those to go with her neural adapters?

She broke the silence before he had a chance to ask.

“Believe me, Mr. Moreau, I am perfectly aware that my situation is unusual,” her eyes were closed now, and her whole body was tense, like she was expecting a fight. “It is true that organic bodies are not so easily repaired as synthetics, but I have never once asked for special accommodation due to my condition.”

“What, the condition of being organic?” Joker blinked a couple of times. “I don’t think anyone’s gonna blame you for that, Edi.”

Edi’s eyes snapped open and she looked at him, obviously confused. “You mean you don’t know? I thought it would be common knowledge among the crew.”

“Clearly it isn’t, because you’ve lost me.”

“A maladapted gene sequence used in Cerberus’s cloning procedure left my skeletal development incomplete. Structural supports were installed, but I am still left at a distinct physical disadvantage. For example, a fall from a height greater than half a meter will result in compound fractures to at least one of my legs.” She looked sideways at him and raised a sardonic brow. “It’s very dramatic.”

“Holy crap,” Joker mumbled. That sounded gruesome, even for Cerberus. They’d probably have to have grown her from scratch, too. He wondered how young they’d started their tests on her. He probably didn’t want to know.

Before he could say anything else, Edi had sat up straight once more and was leaning towards him, leveling a look that could cut glass. The irises of her eyes were missing the segmented aperture universal to humans, smooth and uncompromising.

“Do not let that fool you into believing my service record is in any way inaccurate. I have earned every one of my achievements, and without any additional accommodations. I take my position very seriously, Mr. Moreau.”

“I don’t doubt it,” Joker held his hands up, now feeling like he was in way over his head. “I didn’t even know you were sick.”

“I had assumed since my medical records were transferred onboard, they would be easily accessible.” 

“What? No,” he shook his head. “Everyone’s medical record is encrypted so nobody can get to it but Dr. Chakwas, same as the old Normandy.”

“…I see,” Edi furrowed her brows and leaned back, her voice growing quiet. “That is new information. I apologize for my outburst.”

“You don’t have to apologize. Hell, I’d be pissed off too, if people treated me like a lab specimen my whole life.”

Edi didn’t say anything after that, but it was a good minute before she returned her attention to her terminal.

\--

“Good god, that thing is ugly,” Shepard murmured, peering through the glass-walled tank at the seeker bug trapped inside. It jumped at her, making a dull noise against the glass. A long, needle-tipped tongue flicked out, smearing the side of the tank with thick, hyper-reactive venom. One drop of it sent a chain reaction down the metal and composites of the human skeleton, binding them in place on a molecular level.

“Collectors not known for sense of style,” Mordin replied, still clicking away at his keyboard. Shepard turned to see the smile tugging at the edge of his mouth.  “Reapers not necessarily preoccupied with aesthetics, either. Would likely assume form less similar to earth marine life, otherwise.”

“Yeah, no kidding,” Shepard chuckled softly. “Who’d have thought I’d be fighting giant metal squids for the fate of the galaxy? Anyway, do you have something that’ll keep these things off us?”

“Yes,” Mordin nodded, looking very pleased with himself. “Tried multiple methods before obvious solution presented itself. Seeker specimen consistently attempted escape when other humans entered lab. Never once moved towards me, nor towards organic specimens introduced to habitat. Seekers will not approach organics.”

“They really are looking specifically for humans,” Shepard shook her head. “How does that help us, though? Do you want me to have Garrus take a team down? I don’t doubt he could do it, but—”

“Good idea, but not necessary. Have enlisted help of Dr. Chakwas to create false organic life sign program.” Mordin pulled up a software file at his terminal, and Shepard downloaded it to her main drive. “Heat dispersal is altered slightly by software, so do not recommend extended use. Still, should deter swarms while on ground.”

“Never would’ve figured it would be that simple,” Shepard fired it up and took a moment to see if she felt any different. Besides a minor shift in her heat sinks, it didn’t take too much getting used to. “Maybe we could disperse—wait. Organic specimens? What, did you bring a pyjak on board, or something?”

“No no no, absolutely not.” Mordin shook his head. “Pyjak far too big for seeker tank. Much better solution already within reach.”

“…Mordin,” Shepard felt the slow creep of dread stalling her subroutines, “tell me you didn’t put my hamster into the tank with the Collector bug.”

“Of course not,” Mordin inhaled deeply. “Most unpleasant notion. Would not _dream_ of interfering with your hamster.”

“So how do you know this will work?”

“Testing method not actually my idea. Noticed during transportation that the seeker did not attempt to pursue Edi. Edi volunteered to insert own hand into seeker tank. With proper sealants in place to ensure no escape, of course.”

“She did _what_?”

“Seeker showed no more interest in her than in non-human crew members. Surprised I did not think of it earlier. Naturally, had already developed anti-venom to counteract seeker paralysis. Would not have let her attempt, otherwise.”

“I hope to god not.” Shepard’s eyes were wide enough that the silvery plates behind her eyelids were just barely visible.  “Well…does that antivenom work on synthetics, or just organics?”

“Antivenom designed for synthetic humans. Effective on Edi due to synthetic implants.”

“I see,” Shepard double-checked that Mordin’s program was still running. The seeker was drifting idly along the side of the tank opposite Shepard, its tongue retracted. Slowly, Shepard eased her hand into one of the pressure-sealed ports on the side of the tank. The material conformed to the shape of her arm as her hand reached the stale, somewhat sticky air inside. A minute passed, then two.

The seeker hadn’t even moved to face her.

“Holy shit,” Shepard whispered. “Mordin, you’re a genius.”

“Genius classification product of outdated human intelligence metrics,” Mordin winked at her. “Still, sentiment is appreciated.”

\--

It was hell waiting for the seeker venom to wear off, knowing Shepard was just across the building, and he couldn’t even move enough to reach the trigger of his gun.

Because of course it was Shepard. Who else could it be, all the way out in the Terminus systems, gunning down collectors and finally getting those damn comms back online? Sure, a group of opportunistic mercs or privateers could’ve shown up, but even they weren’t crazy enough to drop down in the middle of a collector attack.

With a slowness that ached in every circuit he had, Kaidan felt his body begin to move again, stiff and unyielding for the first few steps. The next few were just a little bit easier. A few more, and he could almost stand up straight.

He didn’t run into any collectors on his way to the tower. He wasn’t paying much attention to the emptiness around him, not really. The colony’s local network was a wasteland of dropped connections.  There were three signals coming from the tower – two personal networks, and one link through the tower itself. Three glowing embers in a field of ash.

For a brief moment, he almost wished it wasn’t her. Greeting a group of hostile mercs might be preferable to facing the fact that the rumors were true – that Shepard was with Cerberus now, the same gutless terrorists he’d helped her gun down two long, long years ago.

For an instant, he thought he might have been right about his merc theory, since the first person he saw was a woman covered head to toe in ink, her shotgun slung low on her hips. There was no mistaking the turian beside her, though, even with his face bandaged up.

 _My god,_ he felt his processors crowded with the white noise of disappointment, _they got Garrus, too_.

The three of them were facing away from him, talking through the comm tower with – wait, he knew that signal. Was that Joker? Was it too much to hope that Shepard had just been rebuilding the Normandy for the past two years, and now she was back in action, saving the galaxy with her friends and crewmates…

Tali’s frenzied email from Freedom’s Progress stuck in his drives like a melted contact. Yes, it really was too much to hope for. Briefly, he wondered what Ashley would think. She’d probably be pissed off. No, she’d _definitely_ be pissed off, and she wouldn’t waste a moment letting Shepard know about it.

Gritting his teeth and clearing up his subroutines in preparation, Kaidan sent her a tentative ping. Shepard wheeled around to face him, a look of surprise (and happiness, which _hurt_ ) washing over her face. He barely recognized her – some of the circuits on her face hadn’t bonded properly with her skin, leaving a spider web of scars that exposed the metal and lights underneath. She barely looked human.

“Kaidan! It’s been ages! How have you been?” She jogged over to him, her squadmates close behind.

“That’s all you have to say?” He shook his head. “Two years of silence, and you think you can just act like nothing happened?”

Shepard stopped short, her smile fading.

“It wasn’t my choice to stay quiet for that long,” she replied. “I got spaced, spent two years getting rebuilt.”

“ _Two years_?” Kaidan could barely keep his vocal software from glitching on him. Tali had told him that story, but he’d hoped she would at least tell him the truth. “Shepard, nobody takes two years to rebuild. Not even you.”

“The fuck do you think _you_ know, pretty boy?” The tattooed woman spat the words at him derisively. “I took at least six. Cerberus doesn’t care much about shit like bioethics codes.”

“Jack,” Shepard held a hand up. “Please.”

“I’d heard rumors,” he resolutely ignored what Jack said – she was probably lying and definitely crazy, “that Commander Shepard was alive…and working for Cerberus. I didn’t want to believe them.”

“Then don’t,” Shepard crossed her arms. “I’m not working for them. They’re working for _me_ , because they’re the only ones willing to go after the Collectors.”

“Is that true, or is that just what Cerberus wants you to think?” He felt his amp heating up, combining with the heatsink on his opposite shoulder to create two distracting points of warmth. He indicated the open, faintly glowing lines on her face. “You’re coming apart at the seams, Shepard. How do I know it’s even you?”

“Kaidan, it’s her,” Garrus took a step forward, almost defensively. “I’m not here because I’m with Cerberus. I’m with Shepard. You of all people should be able to understand that.”

“I’m sorry Garrus, but I don’t.”

Shepard froze, shut her eyes tight for a moment, and then opened them slowly. Eventually, she shook her head. Like he had somehow let her down. It infuriated him.

“For a second, I actually thought you might be able to help us,” she mumbled.

“Not this time, commander,” he turned to leave, a sharp and bitter sadness spreading through him like static. “I still know where my loyalties lie.”

He turned to leave, but the possibility that it really was her tugged at him, and reluctantly he turned back to face her, again.

“Good luck, commander.”

His anger didn’t fade, even as he left the compound. He found himself thinking, as he stepped over the scorched bodies of the collectors, that it would’ve hurt less to believe she was still dead. He hated himself for it.

\--

They were on Haestrom before Shepard even bothered reading the other dossiers. Sure, the sun burned their shields and seriously screwed with her optics, but the idea of fighting with Tali and Garrus at her back again seemed almost too good to be true.

(In a way, it was. Tali had already come and gone once, and Garrus…wasn’t himself. She tried not to think too hard about that.)

Blessedly, Tali was ready to join them this time. She got set up in engineering with little trouble, and before the day was even over, she had joined Shepard and Garrus in the starboard observation lounge. For the first time in a while, Shepard actually felt herself relax.

“I never got to thank you, Shepard,” Tali leaned back against the sofa and stretched her legs out. “For making sure Reegar made it, I mean. He’s got a lot more to offer the galaxy than a rocket launcher.”

“I can understand his thinking,” Garrus shrugged. “When you’re in a situation like that, it’s easy to already consider yourself dead.”

“Thankfully, it didn’t come to that,” Tali said. “I’m glad you came to get me, Shepard. More than that, I’m glad to be back on the Normandy, even if it has changed.”

Shepard couldn’t really see it, but she knew Tali was looking sideways at her.

“I don’t like the changes any more than you do,” she sighed. “It’s like I woke up in some broken parallel universe. Garrus became a merc hunter, Joker’s drives got quarantined, and as far as everyone else knows, we’re working for Cerberus. On paper, this whole situation looks ugly.”

“It doesn’t look nearly as bad in person,” Tali picked up the glass of something orange that Gardner had given her. “Your dextro rations are much better.”

“Agreed,” Garrus said. “I also like these observation decks. Not that I minded sitting on a crate by the weapon lockers, but this is much more comfortable.”

“And the lights!” Tali sat up straight. “I can actually see where I’m going in the CIC. Not to mention that drive core. It’s a bit less flashy-looking, sure, but it’s much more stable.”

“They did a good job bringing the Normandy back to us,” Shepard smiled. “Well, more or less. For all the resemblance, this is just a copy. …I went and placed the memorial on the SR-1’s crash site. It’s so strange, to think of how familiar this one feels, when our old ship is actually in pieces and half-buried in ice. The Mako’s in one piece, though.”

“You know,” Garrus chuckled, “somehow that doesn’t surprise me, at all. That bucket of bolts could survive a trip through a black hole, if it tried hard enough.”

“I almost stuck the memorial statue right next to it,” there was an irritatingly full feeling behind Shepard’s eyes, and god damn it, she did _not_ want to get teary right now. “Ended up putting it in front of the old galaxy map. The CIC makes a neat little tunnel leading up from it. It’ll look great in the photos.”

“I can’t wait to see them,” the rest of whatever Tali was about to say got cut short when she turned to face her. “Shepard, are you alright?”

“I guess,” Shepard shrugged. “Actually, you know what? No. No, I’m really not, and I’ll show you why.”

She tugged her collar aside so they could see the scars running down from her face to the left side of her neck.

“I never had this problem before Cerberus put me back together. Dr. Chakwas says it’s probably hardware rejection, because I’m working with a completely new body. We can’t just seal them, because they show up again within the hour.”

“They look a lot better than they did when you came to get me,” Garrus tapped his fingers idly against the couch cushion, looking pensive.

“I know,” she nodded. “They look a hell of a lot better than they did when I first woke up. The only theory Dr. Chakwas has is that I’m getting used to the new hardware, but…”

“Shepard, if this is about what Kaidan said—”

“Wait, Kaidan? When did you see him?” Tali shot straight up where she sat.

“Horizon,” Shepard pinched the bridge of her nose. “He said he couldn’t tell if it was really me…and sometimes I wonder if he had a point. I’ve done so many software scans, I nearly overheated, but I can’t shake the feeling that they might’ve done something to me, changed me in some subtle way I just haven’t caught, yet.”

“I’m assuming Dr. Chakwas has looked you over?” Garrus asked.

“Twice,” she sighed. “She says nothing in my core programming has changed since the last scan she took just before we hit Ilos.”

“Do you _feel_ any different?” Tali shifted just a little, and the light hit her just right, so Shepard could see her face behind the glass of her visor. Her bright, worried eyes, the soft shapes of her nose and upper lip came into focus, all illuminated softly by the violet light of her helmet. She was beautiful.

“Not really,” she shrugged. “Except sometimes I wake up and think I’m still in my old body, and I have to remember how to move, again. Some of my programming works with a different type of code than I’m used to, so even though it doesn’t feel too different, I keep wondering if they really did change me, and I just didn’t notice. Stuff like that.”

“Hey,” Tali scooted closer to her, resting a hand on her shoulder. “Shepard, I’m not an expert on humans, but…you remember on Freedom’s Progress, when Miranda was trying to get Veetor to come with you? You refused, just like I knew you would. If they’d tried to make you into some other Shepard, Garrus and I would be able to tell.”

“We’re not synthetics, so I don’t want to act like I completely understand,” Garrus moved to the side not occupied by Tali, “but as far as I’m concerned, you’re the same Shepard I fought beside on Noveria and Virmire. I think Kaidan might have been able to see that, if he’d taken the time to look.”

“Thanks,” Shepard leaned gently against his cowl, feeling the pleasant warmth of Tali resting her head on her opposite shoulder. The tears previously threatening to emerge had thankfully retreated. “You two are the best friends a girl could ask for.”

“Aww. See, Garrus?” Tali looked up at him. “She does care.”

“Hey,” Shepard elbowed her in the side, even though biting her lip couldn’t make her grin go away. “No making fun of your commander.”

“Spirits, what are we supposed to do when you don’t take us on away missions?” Garrus’s mandibles flared, a mischievous twinkle in his eye.

“I swear to god,” Shepard’s eyes watered again, but this time with laughter.

“Guess you’ll just have to take us out with you, so you can keep an eye on us,” Tali poked Shepard’s ribs lightly, “especially when you decide to go shopping.”

“Don’t tell her to do that,” Garrus suddenly sounded much more serious. “I’ll never get the time to play the Skyllian Five rematch Ken and Gabby owe me.”

Shepard tried to say something, she really did, but she was laughing so hard that her vocals glitched and all that came out was a staticky squeal. It was very undignified.

“That’s what I like to hear,” Garrus’s fingertips tapped lightly against her shoulder. Wait, that was where Tali was sitting, wasn’t it?

Shepard blinked a few times and turned to look at them. Sure enough, there was Garrus’s hand, and the side of Tali’s helmet rested on top of it. They had both wrapped an arm around her shoulders, and were now regarding each other with what looked like something between uncertainty and hope. _Well, then._ She’d love to see how this played out. Probably best not to call them out on it, though.

“I love you guys,” she murmured, leaning against Garrus again and wrapping an arm around Tali’s waist. “Just don’t tell Joker. He’d get jealous.”

To her utter lack of surprise, Joker pinged her a moment later.

>> **I heard that.**

\--

Shepard gave Kasumi a couple days leave once they got to Illium, and the thief was off the ship before Shepard had finished getting her gear ready. Shepard didn’t know much about Illium, but the overview tacked onto its place on the galaxy map led her to expect something like Noveria – a long and dreary adventure in corporate red tape. Hopefully this time, there would be a little less rachni contact.  

The representative who greeted them caught her a little off guard – she hadn’t heard anything about docking fees. It sounded more like Miranda’s area, but when she heard it was taken care of by _Liara_ …

Well, she may have taken off a little faster than was strictly necessary. She blew past at least two people trying to get her attention (was that Gianna Parasini?) and got halfway up the stairs before she thought to slow down. The asari at the door regarded her with some curiosity, and suddenly she was acutely aware of the open scars on her face, the banner her ship now flew.

“Is this Liara T’Soni’s office?” She asked.

“Yes, commander,” the receptionist nodded. “She’s been expecting you.”

 _Of course, she is._ Shepard felt like a fool. _If she didn’t want to see me, she wouldn’t have paid my docking fees._

She entered the office to see Liara in a video call with a man who looked like he was in over his head. Whatever Liara said in reply must have scared him, but the sheer relief of seeing her again flooded her system so badly, her audio sensors cut out. She didn’t know what to say. She didn’t know if she should even say anything, if Liarawould even want to speak to her again.

As Liara turned to face them, the full weight of all the time she had spent dead set in. Liara carried herself with a sure, steady grace. Steel-sharp confidence, once buried beneath shy curiosity, had bloomed into a battle-tested armor. The time Shepard lost had never felt quite so real.

“Shepard!” Liara dropped her datapad and hurriedly reached for the door controls. “Nyxeris, hold my calls.”

In an instant, Liara was in her arms, and in another she could taste the warmth of her lips against her own. She held onto her, letting the rest of the galaxy go for one wonderful second.

“Shepard…” Liara whispered, resting their foreheads together so Shepard could see the raw, glowing emotion in her eyes.  There was no doubt, no hesitation, nothing that Shepard had been so afraid of seeing. She swore she could feel her scars closing, bit by microscopic bit.

After a moment, Liara’s eyes flicked to the side, and she walked past her with a grin.

“Tali!” She hugged the quarian tightly. “Garrus, too! This is almost too good to be true.”

“You didn’t think we’d be anywhere else once we got word that Shepard was back, did you?” Garrus chuckled, patting Liara’s back as she embraced him happily.

“I suppose not,” Liara made her way back to her desk, looking at them all like she’d just been given an embarrassment of riches, “but something tells me you’re not just here to say hello.”

“Not exactly, no.” Shepard pulled up her omni-tool and decided to get straight to business. “I’ve been given some intel I can use to take down the Shadow Broker.  Would you like to come with me?”

There was a long, fragile silence, during which Liara stood motionless, staring blankly at her desk. Her expression was unreadable, and for a second, Shepard wondered if she’d done something wrong. When she finally looked back up, though, Liara’s smile had an edge sharp enough to kill.

“How could I refuse?”

\--

It had become a habit of Shepard’s to keep a visual monitor on her organic teammates’ vital signs, partly to keep track of who needed medi-gel and partly to distinguish them from their organic enemies during heavy combat. By the time they hit Ilos, Shepard could spot Garrus, Tali, Wrex and Liara from a hundred meters away.

When the Baria Frontiers office went up in flames, Shepard’s locators went into overdrive, searching first for Liara, then for any living organic she could find. Unfortunately, the walls were lined to prevent her scanners from seeing anything past the front hallway. Outside the building, there were a few survivors, but once she got past the main floor, she couldn’t pick up any life signs between herself and the crowd outside.

Her chest burned with rage. It was bad enough that someone was after Liara, but the fact that they’d be willing to kill at least a hundred innocent bystanders just made her sick. 

“Shepard, I found a bomb on this side that hasn’t even been armed,” Garrus said over their comm link, his voice hushed. “It’s military grade.”

“Vasir,” Shepard radioed the Spectre above them, “we’ve got unarmed explosives down here.”

“Sloppy work,” Vasir replied, “that’s the kind of hardware you use when you don’t have time to plan.”

A feedback loop of worry was eating at Shepard’s processors, and it was getting hard to think clearly. Mostly to make herself feel better, she sent a simplified version of her vital sign tracker to Garrus and Tali’s visors. She knew it was a long shot, but she was running out of ideas.

“I don’t know if that’s necessary, Shepard,” Tali’s voice was soft and furious. “The employee here wasn’t killed by the explosion. He has gunshot wounds, fresh ones.”

“ _Shit_ ,” Shepard hissed. “Keep your shields up. This was more than a bombing.”

As they rounded the corner, there was a soft _clink_ of a grenade landing at their feet. They didn’t even have time to turn before it blew, blasting them with light and sending Shepard’s optical software reeling.

Shepard hated flashbangs. She could usually hear them well enough to turn her optics off when they blew, but when she couldn’t, it was hell trying to get them back in order. To her frustration, they’d become more and more common in anti-human weapon kits over the years. They were almost as effective against turians, but they didn’t do near as much to quarians, salarians, or asari. (Obviously they didn’t do shit to the hanar, but hanar never had grenades thrown at them outside of those Blasto movies.)

The Shadow Broker’s agents had known she would be here. Shepard didn’t think too much of that because it was the goddamn _Shadow Broker._ His whole business was information. Right now, he was probably sitting in front of a million screens, wearing a stupidly expensive suit and acting like some kind of chess master.

...okay, she _might_ be transferring her anger at Cerberus onto the Shadow Broker. If it weren’t for the fact that the Illusive Man had sent her after the Shadow Broker himself, she’d seriously wonder if this mission was going to end with her killing her own employer.

When they reached Vasir at the end of the hall, Shepard’s sensors finally picked up Liara just a moment before she stepped into view. Her mind raced to make sense of it, how Vasir could have come all the way through the building and not seen Liara. The answer was obvious.

Shepard still wasn’t fast enough to catch her before she blew the window open and took off.

When they got to the skycar, Shepard slid into the driver’s seat and motioned for Garrus to hop in the back. Tali pulled her omni-tool out, ready to call for the shuttle, but Shepard didn’t miss the gentle squeeze Garrus gave her other hand.

 _One more reason to make it back alive_. She gunned the accelerator the second they were in the air. She’d never actually driven a skycar before, but it had simpler controls than a Mako, so she figured they were fine.

\--

Liara had stepped in Tela Vasir’s blood as they left Azure, and little slivers of it marked the distance between them. Shepard couldn’t help but notice the distance getting bigger the further they got, how Liara kept moving, kept pressing on with that same frantic determination, no matter what she said. Shepard panicked; she was losing her.

“Liara, can we just take a second to talk?” She reached for her arm, and Liara turned to face her.

“About what?”

“About _us!_ ”

“Shepard,” Liara sighed, fatigue deepening the shadows on her face, “the things that have happened these past two years, while you were gone…they don’t just disappear.”

“I know,” Shepard cringed a little. So many things had fallen apart, and she’d slept through it all. “But I’m back now, and I want to make this right.”

“I understand,” Liara nodded, “but we’re running out of time. For now, let’s concentrate on getting Feron back.”

“Agreed,” Shepard unconsciously ran a hand through her hair, right above her greybox. Such a small part of the human body, but so very important. Shepard didn’t want to think about what would have happened, had Liara and Feron not retrieved it. “Among other things, I want to thank him.”

Liara gave her the saddest of smiles before turning away again, but Shepard could tell her eyes were just a little less distant than before.

It wasn’t much, but she’d take it.

\--

Crouching behind the stairs, flicking her eyes to Garrus every so often to make sure he was still breathing, Shepard was well and truly terrified for the first time since she was flung from the Normandy. She was a confident woman, good enough with numbers to know her odds of survival before a mission even started. She had yet to be wrong, even on Akuze when being right felt even worse. (Getting spaced, she maintained, didn’t count; she only predicted ground missions.)

She hadn’t bothered to do any research before walking into Liara’s office. The sheer idea of seeing her again had blinded her, and now she was paying for her impatience.  Her armor was going to need a complete rebuild from the waist up, thanks to the Shadow Broker’s gun, and her power cells were in _serious_ danger of going critically low. For the first time in a long, long while, Shepard wasn’t sure if she’d make it back to the Normandy.

Yet she still didn’t hesitate for a second to run up and punch the regeneration field right off of him. Sure, she probably should’ve waited a little longer before approaching Liara with the idea. Maybe next week she’d find the one gun in the universe that could break through that _fucking shield_. But right now, none of it mattered, because the Shadow Broker was popping the heat sink of his gun, and there was the window of time Shepard needed to hit him with one last shot –

It hit home. The broker retreated beneath the swirling white disc, and Shepard was right there behind him, more than ready to crack him across the face with the side of her gun. The shield broke, and Liara stood waiting with her hands raised. The air around them crackled with mass effect fields.

Shepard got well out of the way, staggering back against the wall and never once taking her eyes off of Liara. The bright, burning glow of the fluid that crashed down onto the broker’s head illuminated them for just a moment. It scorched and melted him until he was nothing but ash, and through it all Liara stood like a vengeful goddess, bringing the heavens down upon him.

In the corner of her eye, she saw Garrus’s life signs flicker. In an instant, she was across the room, pushing the rubble aside so she could see him. To her relief, he was waking up. The lights blinked back on, and the dents in his armor looked a little less serious. He would need to visit med bay as soon as they got back, but he would be alright.

A flurry of voices came from the computer behind them. Shepard turned to see Liara at the controls, looking uncertain, unsure. Her fury was gone, replaced by hesitation. Shepard’s drives stalled; she couldn’t believe she hadn’t anticipated this. They had cut the head off the snake, and now the body was writhing.

After one critical moment, Liara activated the console, her voice masked by the same filter as the yahg’s.

“This is the Shadow Broker,” she began.

Shepard walked toward her, feeling her whole body humming with pride. A conversation with Kaidan, years and years ago, sprang to mind. He had called Liara the most innocent crew member on the Normandy, wondering if she was really suited for a mission like theirs. That was long before any of them really knew each other, before they had the slightest idea what they had gotten themselves into.

This was Liara, this wickedly intelligent woman standing at the center of the galaxy’s central nervous system. She was soft spoken, graceful in her movements, and even a small bit shy, but there was fire in her soul. Really, how could Shepard _not_ have fallen for her?

The door behind them opened, and Feron burst in, gun in hand. He was startled, but otherwise unharmed.

“ _You_?” He asked, looking somewhere between angry and heartbroken.

“I just thought, with the old broker dead, his network is too useful to give up.”  Liara motioned to the now-silent control panel.

“Is this really what you want?” Shepard asked.

“Absolutely. I can _help_ you with this, more than I ever thought possible.” 

Feron lowered his gun, now catching sight of the ash dusted across the floor, the only thing left of the former Shadow Broker. His eyes grew wide.

“You really did it,” he smiled softly.

“Yes,” Liara nodded, “we did.”

“I’ll go check on the power systems,” he said, holstering his gun. Garrus followed him out, and just as Shepard was about to wonder why, she turned to see Liara looking around the room in disbelief. Her hands began to shake.

Shepard pulled her close without a second thought, granting her the permission she needed to fall apart. Liara clung to her, eyes dry, shoulders shaking.

“It’s over,” she whispered. “After two years, it’s finally over.”  

She leaned back, looking up at Shepard almost pleadingly. Shepard kissed her before she could say a word. Liara wrapped her arms back around her, and her circuits flushed with warmth. For the first time in years, Shepard was home.

“I didn’t know,” Liara whispered, “it’s been so long, I didn’t know for sure …”

“Now you do,” Shepard replied. Liara’s smile was brighter than she could ever remember seeing.

A notification popped up on the control panel, and Liara stepped away to check on it.

“It’s amazing,” she remaked, “there are no safeguards or user passwords in place. It’s as if the broker never anticipated anyone else being here.”

“Can you make sense of it?” Even from just looking at the number and complexity of the displays, Shepard could tell it would take quite the system to handle it all. The data processing sites they had found in the hallways were incredibly powerful, just from a hardware standpoint. Perhaps there was a reason most of the agents they’d found on board had been human.

“It’s going to take some work, but I believe so,” Liara nodded. “There seems to be a lot of VI assistance for the raw data processing, and…oh my.”

“What?”

“There…Shepard, there are _humans_ in here.”

Shepard balked, feeling revulsion eat at her. “How is that possible?”

“It looks like their greyboxes are connected directly to the system’s hardware,” Liara pulled up a submenu and began scrolling through the broker’s records. “No, not quite. Their bodies are linked up to connection docks that transmit here. They’ve been given massive amounts of drive space and processing power to use when they’re connected…and they are _astoundingly_ well-compensated.”

“I guess they’d have to be,” Shepard raised an eyebrow. “Hooking a pissed-off human up to your network is just asking for trouble.”

“From the looks of it, the broker found that out the hard way,” the corner of Liara’s mouth twitched upwards. “There’s just so much here…”

Shepard could feel the coolant flow in her face kick up. Liara wasn’t coming with her. It was for the best, but Shepard felt the cold wash of disappointment, all the same.

“You’re welcome to come visit us on the Normandy sometime.”

“I’d like that,” Liara turned to face her, a wordless apology in her eyes, “and I’ll have so much more for you when you come back.”

 _When,_ not _if_.

It was enough.

“I’ll see you then.”  

\--

The second the life support doors closed behind her, Shepard stormed to the elevator, heatsinks blazing with anger. It was all she could do to keep composure while talking to Thane. He was a good man, and he didn’t deserve the anger that he didn’t really cause.

She considered for a second going up a deck and venting to Joker, but she couldn’t do that without Edi hearing, and right now, she didn’t trust anyone from Cerberus as far as she could throw them.  She punched the button for Engineering and dug her fingernails into her palms as the elevator traveled down.

Tali, she decided. She could talk to Tali. Hell, she could _always_ talk to Tali, and Tali would understand and calm her down and agree that yeah, this was complete bullshit. She and Garrus both had a way of bringing her back from the edge.

So, why did she stop halfway to the door behind Tali’s workstation?

She needed someone to calm her down, yes, but right now that wasn’t what she _wanted_.

She took a left and slipped quietly down the stairs beside her. Jack stood with her back against the wall, hands glowing and eyes wild. She looked like she’d been ready to strike since long before Shepard got there.

“The fuck happened to you?” She asked, raising an eyebrow but not moving from her defensive posture.

“Cerberus,” Shepard spat, sitting down on top of the desk by Jack’s cot.

“Join the goddamn club,” Jack gave a bitter laugh and walked over to sit on the bed across from her. She hauled her shotgun out from under it, fastening and unfastening the modified barrel like she needed something to do with her hands. “What finally clued you in?”

“Thane,” she shook her head. “If they’re trying to manipulate someone with a background in medicine, they could at least be a little more subtle. I’ve done enough rounds in psych to know when someone’s trying to play me.”

“I thought the drell was a freelancer.”

“He is. _He_ didn’t do anything wrong,” Shepard picked at the edges of her sleeve, wondering how many eyes and ears were hidden in the walls around them. “It’s the fact that he was even on the dossier list. I know my paramedic work is public information, but seriously? An organic teammate with a terminal illness that _has no cure_?”

“No shit,” Jack laughed again, “that thing about dying wasn’t just him being poetic? I’m guessing he’s got long enough to hit the Omega-4 relay, and we didn’t just waste our time.”

“He says he does,” Shepard shrugged. “In a way, he’s the perfect man for this job. But fuck, it’s like Cerberus doesn’t care that I know they’re trying to get under my skin.”

“That’s because they _don’t_ ,” Jack stood up, dumping her shotgun onto the bed. “When are you gonna figure it out? Cerberus doesn’t give a shit. The only reason they’re even going after the Collectors is because if they don’t, all of humanity is gonna get wiped off the map – _including them_.”

“And that’s bullshit, but they’re the only ones willing to do it.”

“They’re willing to do anything if it might help them,” Jack walked up to Shepard and looked her dead in the eye. She shifted her weight from one foot to the other, unable to stay still. “Even taking a girl from her parents three days post-build and jamming a shit-ton of eezo in her system.”

Shepard’s eyebrows flew upward.

“They really did scrub your greybox?”

“They did more than that,” Jack laughed bitterly, walking over to the stairwell and taking a seat. “Ever have someone hardwire a control switch to your pain circuits?”

“Why would they do that?” Shepard asked, following her over to the stairs.

“It was the only way they could get me to follow directions,” Jack leaned forward, elbows on knees, her tone as casual as if she were discussing the temperature in the engineering deck. “After a while, even that didn’t work.”

“And that’s when you escaped?”

“No, that’s when they powered me down and tried to attach one directly to my movement controls,” she tapped a scar on the side of her neck, bright and ugly with hastily applied skin sealant. “Except some emergency happened before they could finish it, so they locked me in my room until I woke up. _That’s_ when I escaped.”

Anger jammed Shepard’s processes, for Jack and for herself and for Kahoku and his men, and if she didn’t do _something_ to kick back, she was going to burn herself out.

Jack must have noticed how furious she was (she probably noticed it when Shepard first came down the stairs), because she gave her a smile that dripped with venom.

“Tell you what, Shepard. I found the location on Pragia, the place where they took me? I want to go there, I want to find my old cell, I want to deploy a big _fucking_ bomb, and I want to watch from orbit when it goes.”

Once Shepard had gotten over her surprise, she gave a soft laugh. That sounded like the best idea she’d heard in days. She sent Joker the navpoint without even blinking. In less than a second, he sent their ETA back.

“Get your guns ready,” she said. “We land in two hours.”

\--

Shepard took Garrus down to Pragia with them, if only because she desperately needed someone to provide a stabilizing element. The air was thick and humid from the rain pouring around them, and the whole place carried the stench of dead plants…and dead varren.

“Spirits,” Garrus whispered as they entered the next clearing, “this looks like some kind of arena.”

“This is where they’d bring me out to fight some of the others,” Jack said, kicking one of the concrete barriers. “Dunno where they got the parts for them all, but I don’t think they had more than ten or twenty greyboxes. They’d just rebuild them after I tore them up. A lot of the time the parts didn’t match. After a while they looked more like those husks than people.”

“What happened to the greyboxes when you escaped?”

“On my way out, I made sure everyone that stood in my way got scorched,” she spat. “They punished me when I tried to do that in the arena. Guess it would’ve been too much work to build new ones.”

“They punished you?” Shepard asked, turning away from the skin polymer burnt into the side of the ring. “During a fight?”

“Remember that switch I was talking about? If I hesitated, it fired on my pain sensors. When I attacked…” Jack grinned. “It felt like one of those morphine chips they sell on Omega.”

“I take it you got the switch removed once you got out?”

“Hell, no. Did it myself.”

“ _Yourself_?”

“You think I was gonna let someone else screw around in my motherboard? Fuck that. A couple of clamps to hold the wires back, and all I had to do was break off the contacts. Didn’t even leave a scar.”

“Not that anyone could tell if it did,” Shepard remarked.

“Just the way I like it,” Jack slid her gun out of its holster. “Come on, let’s get going.”

\--

When they finally reached the hallway leading to Jack’s old room, her eezo cores were flaring under her skin. She charged at the blood pack mercs and threw a shockwave at them hard enough to send them flying. By the time they were all cleared out and Jack stood wild-eyed above the now-dead krogan leading them, Shepard had hardly needed to lift her gun. Even then, Jack still fidgeted with manic energy.

“Come on,” she panted, “it’s just through here.”

The room she led them to was painfully empty. The plants that choked and ravaged every corner of the buildings hadn’t even touched it. The furniture not bolted down had been overturned, and there were scratch marks on a couple of the walls.

There was a man standing in the middle of the room, facing the window. Even from the doorway, Shepard could see the raised skin where uneven cords were haphazardly connected, the exposed wiring on his neck that led to a solid metal plate on the side of his head, covering his greybox. He turned around, and it only got worse. One shoulder joint was loose, so his arms hung at different lengths. The aperture of one eye was a completely different color than the other, and from the way he blinked, it was probably a completely different model.

“Jack?” He smiled a bit breathlessly. “You’ve come back. So you were drawn back here, too.”

“Who the hell are you?” Jack asked, her lip curled up in revulsion.

“Aresh,” the man replied, “I was one of the other subjects. I’ve come back to bring this facility back to life.”

“You _what_?” Jack struck out at him, knocking him to his knees.

“This facility had a great purpose,” Aresh continued, “the things we went through to make sure you survived…it was a high price to pay. But the work must continue.”

“Like hell it will,” Jack popped the heatsink of her gun and prepared to shoot.

“ _Jack!_ ” Shepard barked. “Look at him, do you seriously think he’s capable of that? He’s completely lost it.”

“But – I,” Aresh stammered, “the mercenaries –”

“Are all dead,” Jack lowered her gun and waved him out. “Get the fuck out of here before I change my mind. And get yourself to a goddamn repair shop.” 

Aresh ran, and Shepard’s eyes followed him until he disappeared into the next building.

“You should’ve let me kill him, Shepard.”

“Jack, at some point, you’ve got to let this place go.”

“Believe me, I plan on it,” Jack sighed in frustration. “Let me take one last look around the place. I just…I don’t know what to think. One second, I’m crazy. I’m a dangerous bitch. And then the next, I’m this scared kid waking up from a hard reset.”

“Take your time,” Shepard replied, turning back to Garrus. He looked at least as uncomfortable with the place as Shepard felt, which didn’t help much.

Jack took a couple of steps around the room, eyes unfocused and distant.

“You notice yet that there isn’t an emergency charge port? They did that on purpose. When I was too hard to handle, they just stuck me in here and let my power cells run out. Downside of this many eezo cores. If I can’t get to sunlight, I burn through cells like paper.”

She continued out into the hall, where Shepard could see a gleaming mark on the wall, just above the floor.

“That’s the first guard I killed when I broke out. Pulled out his greybox and melted it with mass effect fields. Damn, that felt good.” Jack shook her head and then sighed, again. “Alright, I’ve had more than enough of this place. Let’s get the charges planted and get the hell out of here.”

Shepard nodded and called for the shuttle.

The look in Jack’s eyes as they flew out, her thumb flicking impatiently at the detonator’s lid, stuck in Shepard’s subroutines for the next five sleep cycles.

\--

“The Illusive Man would like to speak with you in the briefing room, commander.” Kelly said, looking over her shoulder at Shepard.

“He can wait,” Shepard replied hastily. She hit the elevator button for the crew deck and tried for the third time to understand what had just happened. She didn’t know much about justicars, mostly because she’d only heard of them in works of fiction. It was sort of like seeing a quarian without an exo-suit; they were commonplace hundreds of years ago, but nobody saw them in person anymore.

Samara was beautiful – breathtakingly so, and it was more than just her appearance. She walked with power in her stride and certainty in her movements. Her code was absolute – there was no room for hesitation, and evidently no opportunity for remorse. It was chilling, but captivating.

Her body had glowed with biotic energy as she knelt before Shepard and swore herself to her service, and when she stood, it had melted slowly off of her, lingering in her eyes. She had looked like some long-forgotten deity, the kind whose image was painted on the walls of caves and temples. 

There was more to it, though. As soon as they’d gotten back on the shuttle, Shepard had gotten Joker to run a comprehensive search to see if a justicar had ever sworn an oath to a human. He couldn’t find a single record. There were a few who had been asked for help by humans before – and they had all refused.

Shepard had to know why Samara would want to be the first to accept.

She found her sitting by the window, back straight and legs crossed, a spinning ball of liquid light balanced in her hands. Upon her arrival, it dissolved. Samara quickly stood, taking a step towards the window.

“I have been chasing that fugitive for four hundred years,” she said. “Without that information, I would have lost the trail, yet again. Thank you, Shepard.”

“I’m happy to help,” Shepard approached her slowly. There was a short silence before she continued. “I admit, I didn’t expect that. Detective Anaya looked pretty surprised.”

“It is not a common occurrence for a justicar to swear an oath like that,” Samara’s gaze remained distant, lost somewhere in the empty space outside. “However, very little about my situation or yours is common. I will confess that my motivations were not purely selfless.”

“How so?”

“Human ships are generally equipped with much more efficient computer terminals than those of any other race. This ship in particular seems to have spared no expense.”

“It did come with quite the price tag,” Shepard sighed. “So, you wanted to use the Normandy’s hardware to find this fugitive more quickly?”

“The person I am chasing is very quick and very clever,” Samara finally turned to face her. “This may be the only way I could ever hope to catch up with her.”

“I see.” Shepard leaned against the thick glass behind her. It made a little more sense, now. Humans were synthetics, and synthetics were useful. Nothing much had changed, after all.

“Do not think I made the decision lightly, Shepard.” Samara stepped back from the window again and resumed her seated position. “You have proven yourself thus far to be an honorable commander. I look forward to seeing where this journey takes us.”

With that, the spinning ball of light reappeared between her hands, and Shepard left the observation deck with just a little more hope than she’d brought in.

\--

Edi had been keeping her monitor’s audio feed tuned in to Shepard’s conversation with the Illusive Man, and she didn’t activate her cybernetics until Shepard, Garrus, and Tali were in the shuttle and on their way to the colossal ship. She didn’t want to chance them overheating during what might be their most important mission thus far.

“That doesn’t even look like a ship,” she said softly, gazing out the window at the enormous structure in front of them.

“Yeah, it’s more like a hive, or something.” Joker added. “Doesn’t look any less freaky than last time, that’s for sure.”

“Last time?” Edi turned her visor off for a second so she could see him more clearly. “What do you mean?”

“It looks just like the one that hit us two years ago,” Joker replied, his lip curled up in disgust. After a moment, his eyes widened. “It _really_ looks like the one that hit us two years ago.                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                   …can you check? Your boss has me locked out of those files, but I think you have the right access codes. I mean, I haven’t seen too many Collector ships, so maybe they all look like that, but...”

Edi nodded, feeling dread claw its way up her stomach. She pulled the records of the attack on the previous Normandy, looking for the energy signatures taken from the Collector vessel. Beside her, Joker was talking to Shepard. She patched herself into the visual feed, letting the scan run in the background.

Shepard’s visual feed showed a dead Collector lying in one of their own pods. In Shepard’s peripheral vision, Edi could see the tarnished gleam of disassembled humans scattered around the area. The ship must be full of them.

“It looks like they were trying to study differences between themselves and humans,” Joker said, pulling up information from the Collector terminal. “They’re nearly half-synthetic, so I guess it makes – whoa.”

“What?” Edi tore her eyes away from the terminal to look at him.

“The Collectors…they’re Prothean. Or, they used to be. Their DNA is a match to Prothean samples in the ship’s archive. Holy shit…”

Over the comm, Edi could hear the revulsion in Shepard’s voice.

“The Reapers didn’t wipe out the Protheans. They turned them into the Collectors!”

“Then, what do the Collectors want with us?” Joker tapped his fingers nervously on his armrest.

Edi’s database search found what it was looking for. Once her throat was no longer so tight she had trouble speaking, she patched herself into the audio feed, as well.

“Shepard, at Joker’s suggestion, I compared the energy signature of this ship with the vessel that attacked the Normandy two years ago.” She gripped the sides of her seat hard enough for her fingernails to leave marks in the padding. “They are an exact match.”

“This is too much of a coincidence,” Shepard’s voice burned with anger.

“I agree,” Edi murmured, mostly to herself. She combed back through the Illusive Man’s report on the current mission, trying to figure out how he hadn’t realized this before he sent them after the ship.

“I found a command console,” Shepard said from below. “Get ready to link up, Joker.”

“Ready,” Joker relaxed a little, and Edi could feel a subtle shift in the hum of the Normandy’s drive core as Joker diverted some of the power to his main processors.

Edi’s scan finished, and the bottom of her stomach dropped out. The turian signal was fake, and there was no way the Illusive Man could’ve sent them here without knowing it.

“This is a trap.”

The displays in the cockpit went dark, followed by a glowing red image of a Collector staring right at them. Edi could feel the Normandy’s link being breached by a swell of defense programs. The firewall between the intruders and the crew currently linked up was wearing down by the second.

“Shit,” Joker began rerouting power and trying to divert the attack as best he could. “Get out of the network!”

Edi barely had time turn her cybernetics off before the lights went down around them. She panicked, wondering if life support had been hit, but she could still feel the gentle flow of the oxygen circulation. Looking up through the window, she still saw the shields intact around the ship. A glance back into the CIC showed that the crew seemed thankfully unaffected by the power surge.

She was about to commend Joker on his ability to move so quickly, when she saw him slumped and immobile in his chair.

“ _Jeff_!” She jumped out of her seat quickly enough to make the reinforcements in one knee click together. If he was gone and Shepard was in danger, how were they going to get out of here? She could pilot, but she didn’t know about outrunning a Collector ship – 

“I’m okay,” Joker’s voice came from the speakers above her. “I had to shut down my mobile body to keep the surge from hitting it. Give me a second to reboot it.”  

Edi sat back down, feeling a little foolish. She had only ever known humans whose entire system was contained in their humanoid body. According to what her research had told her, it wasn’t common for pilots to have onboard drive space to the extent that Joker did. Briefly, she wondered where his greybox was, or if he even had one.

After a minute, Joker straightened back up and re-established a connection with the ground team.

“What the hell was that?” Shepard asked frantically. The signal was weak; they could barely hear her.

“There was a power surge,” Joker replied, “I rerouted it to non-critical systems, but there’s still someone else on the connection. They’re trying to disrupt it.”

A tremendous thudding noise came from Shepard’s audio, followed by the sound of her swearing and a heatsink clinking on the floor.

“Alright, I’ve got the connection back, but I need to finish the download before I can override any of their systems.”

“Just make it quick!” Shepard shouted between rounds of gunfire. “We’ve got company, and lots of it!”

“Damn it,” Joker hissed. “Edi, take the helm, but do _not_ link up. This is gonna take everything I’ve got.”

With that, Joker leaned back in his seat and shut his eyes, again. Edi turned her eyes away before his body went slack. Even though she knew he was alright, it was still unnerving to see. Instead, she brought up the navigation controls and glanced at the surveillance camera integrated into her console. She gave it a reassuring nod, just because it felt right.

It was obvious that Shepard and Joker didn’t trust Cerberus from the start. A few of their team members didn’t seem to have a very good opinion of them, either. Still, Edi believed that Cerberus did good work, for the most part. They had given her life, and they had given her the opportunity to be sitting here in the cockpit of the Normandy, chasing down humanity’s greatest threat. …but the Illusive Man had deliberately withheld the real nature of this assignment from them.

As she listened to the sounds of shouting and gunfire coming from her speakers, she glanced over at Joker’s terminal. Lines of code were flying up the screen in a complete blur while the brim of his hat slid down over his closed eyes.

There was no denying that Cerberus had every intention of destroying the Collectors, and everyone on the ship knew that even if they accomplished their goal, they might not make it back alive.

But wasn’t it vital that they live to reach the Omega-4 relay?

Finally, Joker sat back up and adjusted his hat.

“Okay, that’s got it. Now we’ve just got to get out of there.”

“Shepard,” Edi spoke through the audio connection in her terminal, not ready yet to risk linking up, “I analyzed the turian distress signal that the Illusive Man used to locate this ship. It contains an error clearly identifying it as fake.”

“So this was a setup from the beginning,” Shepard replied.

“Not just that,” Edi pulled up her scan results on her terminal and sent a copy to Joker’s screen. “I discovered this error using Cerberus detection protocols that the Illusive Man wrote himself. There is no way he could have been fooled by the signal.”

“That son of a bitch had us walk straight into a trap!” Shepard’s voice buzzed with anger on the last word, making Edi jump. She had never heard the commander so angry.

“Uh, commander, you’re gonna want to get out of there like, _now_ ,” Joker interrupted. “The Collector ship’s weapons are starting to power up. I’m gonna open up a door for you at the end of the room.”

Working on something this sensitive without her cybernetics felt like seeing everything through a microscope. She had five windows up on her terminal, and it still wasn’t enough. The shuttle was ready, but getting Shepard’s team close enough to board it was another matter entirely.

“God damn,” Joker muttered, “they do _not_ like having me override their door controls.”

“Is the network still infected?” She asked, hoping she wasn’t diverting too much of his concentration from the task at hand.

“Yeah, and it’s probably gonna be until we get our asses out of here. Okay, Shepard – _shit!_ Okay, trying a _different_ door…” Jeff was scrambling to keep up, hands flying over the keys to his terminal even while he was still connected to the Collector ship’s systems.

“Here,” Edi switched a couple of windows on her terminal, “I’ll keep the infection away from the drive core and the propulsion system.”

“Thanks. They’re almost out.”

Even with her implants turned off, Edi could feel a headache squeezing its way up the sides of her skull, and the longer they had to wait, the trickier it got to find a rerouting path that the Collector software hadn’t already compensated for. She got a bit lost in it, so caught up in the game of cat and mouse that she almost didn’t hear the shuttle bay close underneath them.

“Finally,” Joker sighed, and with that they were rocketing towards the mass relay.

With the signal lost, isolating and removing the Collector software was much easier. Edi sighed in relief and leaned back in her chair. She needed nothing more now than a hot shower and some painkillers.

“Hey.”

She blinked a few times and turned to face Joker. He looked about as exhausted as she felt, but he was smiling.

“I know I act like I don’t need a co-pilot,” he looked away from her, lifting his hat so he could brush his hair back, “but I don’t think I could’ve done that without you, so…thanks.”

Edi felt something weird just under her sternum, like it was hot and cold all at once. She didn’t know what to make of it, but right now, she didn’t want to overthink it.

“Anytime.”

\--

On the way back to Illium, Miranda divulged her concerns about her sister to Shepard, so she decided they’d head to the bar first. Of course, they ran into Conrad-Goddamn-Overexcited-Puppy-Verner as soon as they walked in the door.

Later, Shepard would wonder if she might have taken some of her frustrations with Cerberus out on the poor guy. Probably. Either way, it didn’t make her feel much better.

“What the hell was he talking about?” Tali watched him as he left the bar. “I never saw you point your gun at him.”

“That’s because I never _did_ ,” Shepard turned to the asari matriarch behind the bar. “Maybe he caught some kind of memory-altering virus.”

“Beats me,” Aethyta shrugged. “I’m just glad you got him out of here. We’ve got some bourbon chips, if you want one. Fresh on the market. Looks like you could use it.”

“As tempting as that sounds,” she sighed, “I have somewhere else to be.” 

“Suit yourself.”

As she turned around and headed over to the side room, she noticed Tali wasn’t following her. She stood completely still by the bar, and her eyes looked a bit wider than usual.

She put a hand on her shoulder as they headed toward the docking station. Tali jumped, but joined them nonetheless. After a second, she actually pinged her, to Shepard’s surprise. She hadn’t realized Tali had kept the software she’d given her so she could message her directly from her suit.

>You okay?

>>Did you _hear that_?

>Hear what?

>>The quarian lady at the table? The one talking to that turian?

>The one complaining about her boyfriend?

>>Ex-boyfriend.

>I guess not, then.

>>She was about to show him her neurostim program! _Out in the open_!

>Uh…

Shepard took a second to consider this. There was basically only one use for neurostim programs, aside from the extremely simple ones quarian artists and medics used to increase sensation in their hands.

> _Seriously_?

>> _I KNOW._ Keelah, that poor turian has no idea what he’s getting into.

>I think they’ll be alright.

There was a pause then, as they neared the cargo terminal.

>>You think so?

>I’m sure of it.

\--

“That’s your sister?”

“That’s Ori,” Miranda nodded.

Shepard took a moment to study the young woman across the room, talking happily with her parents. She had the same poise as Miranda, the same sureness in her eyes, but her hair was cut short, and her build was wiry, obviously not designed with combat in mind. On the whole, she looked more like Miranda’s sister in the way organic siblings used to.

“Don’t take this the wrong way, but…”

“Why doesn’t she look like me?” Miranda laughed softly. “Line for line, our base coding is the same, but my father built her ten years after me. He installed failsafes in her hardware that would let him control her more directly…so I stole her greybox and rebuilt her from scratch. She couldn’t look exactly like me, or my father would have no trouble finding her.”

Miranda curled her fingers in the air just below her neck, like she was reaching for a necklace she no longer owned.

“I don’t think she’s ever seen me in person, before. Her first startup after the rebuild was at her new parents’ home.”

They stayed like that for a moment, Miranda looking conflicted for a minute before turning back to leave.

“You’re not going to say anything to her?” Shepard asked.

“What would I say? She has her own family, now. She doesn’t need to get tangled up in my business.”

“I think she’d like to know that she has a big sister who loves her,” Shepard countered. “You don’t have to tell her everything. Just introduce yourself.”

“…alright,” Miranda turned back and headed toward her sister, step by tentative step.

 Tali put a hand on Shepard’s shoulder.

“Thank you,” she said softly. “If that didn’t convince her, I was about to drag her over there myself, and that probably would have looked a little strange.”

\--

Edi sat as still as she could and took deep, slow breaths. Her medications did awful things to her stomach if she forgot to eat after taking them, and sometimes even if she didn’t. Today was one of those rare occasions when she wondered if breaking her ankle was worth not having to feel like she had swallowed a can of paint thinner.

“This is actually good,” Garrus looked up from his dinner and glanced at Mess Sergeant Gardner. “What changed?”

“Trade secret,” Gardner grinned at them, looking very pleased with himself.

Edi’s stomach calmed down enough for her to open an eye and look back at him.

“I wasn’t aware Commander Shepard’s decision to change our provision supplier qualified as a ‘trade secret’.”

“Come on!” Gardner threw his hands in the air, but his broad grin belied any illusions of being serious. “Where’s the fun in any of this, if you’re just gonna ruin the mystery?”

“You could submit your requisition orders through classified networks, but I think that might slow down procurement time.” Edi raised an eyebrow at him. In response, Gardner just shook his head and went back to his station. In the seat opposite her, Garrus was laughing.

“I thought this tasted familiar,” he said. “Must be from that place in Zakera Ward. They’re a little expensive, but they’ve got the best turian chefs on the whole Citadel.”

“They even managed to make nutripaste taste good,” Tali remarked, “or whatever this is. It’s got much more flavor to it than I’m used to. If I’m not careful, I’ll be spoiled rotten by the time this mission is over.”

Edi examined the system of tubes connected to Tali’s helmet. It was surprisingly elegant, the way her suit was structured. Not an inch of space was wasted. She wondered idly what the first quarian exosuits looked like, how they had changed over the years. Maybe she could look that up next time she had trouble sleeping. 

“I don’t want to make you uncomfortable,” she began hesitantly, “but I’m curious as to how your suit’s nutrient delivery system is set up.”

“Oh, this?” Tali lifted the side of her hood just a little, pointing to a narrow, grey tube that ran along the side of her jaw. It became lost in the intertwined system at her neck, but Edi was fairly sure it ended at her left forearm. “It’s just a simple pump delivery. I slide the cartridge in here, and it’s mostly automatic.”

She pointed to the exact spot Edi had guessed at, where a small port opened up to reveal a half-drained tube.

“I see,” Edi nodded. “It looks somewhat similar to the device that transferred nourishment into my old capsule.”

“Your what?” Garrus tilted his head a bit.

“Since my skeletal reinforcements couldn’t be installed until my bones were finished growing, I spent most of my early years in a medical capsule. It had to readjust itself constantly in order to facilitate proper muscle development without putting excess pressure on my joints.”

“Really?” Tali leaned back in her chair. “Was it stationary, or could you move?”

“Some moved, and some did not. I preferred the ones that could move, even when I had very little space to move around in. The closer I was to having the reinforcements put in, however, the more dangerous that became.”

“I’m afraid I don’t follow.” Garrus looked at her quizzically.

“Imagine taking a solid rod of clay,” she began, “and then stretch it out over the course of many years. Initially, it was still compact enough to allow for mobility, but over time, so little new tissue was added that even small movements risked injury.”

She glanced at the other two, trying to see if she’d made them uncomfortable. Talking about her history like this always left her feeling strange. On the one hand, she hadn’t had much company before her assignment to the Normandy, so she was happy – even eager – to talk to the rest of the crew, especially the other organics. On the other hand, the more she talked about herself and her past, the more aware she became of how unusual her situation was.

She rolled the handle of her fork between her fingers, imagining the fragile shell of her bones stretching thinner and thinner as time wore on. She didn’t know much about organic humans from before the plague, but she recognized that they probably didn’t spend half their life growing like a specimen in a lab.

“I see,” Tali tapped her fingers on the table thoughtfully. “That’s fascinating.”

“I’m glad you think so,” Edi said flatly.

“No, I didn’t mean it like that,” Tali shook her head and pulled out her omni-tool. “It’s because quarian children grow up in these sterile bubbles until they’re old enough for their first suit. See? I lived next door to this little girl before I started my Pilgrimage. I think her name was Neryl.”

Tali pulled up a video of a tiny little quarian encased in a clear, transparent ball. She had her hands pressed up against the front and was running in a gleeful circle around Tali’s purple-shoed feet. Her skin was a beautiful shade of dusky green, and she was dressed in a blouse of the same color with frayed tan shorts. Tali’s other hand came down to bop against the top of her bubble, and she shrieked in delight. She pressed her hand against Tali’s, their palms meeting through the thin sheet of polymer.

The clip ended there, and Tali deactivated her omni-tool. When she moved her arm away, Edi could see her own reflection in the shiny surface of the table. She was startled by how brightly she was smiling.

“Thank you for showing me that,” she said softly.

“Sure thing,” Tali nodded.

\--

It wasn’t until she looked up and saw Jacob’s worried expression that Shepard realized she might’ve set her weapons down a little harder than necessary. Behind her, Jack was disassembling her shotgun, vigorously shaking the dust out of the casing. Grunt was admiring the heavy weapon table with a gleam in his eye that made her a little nervous.

“When you said we were landing on Tuchanka, I thought you were joking,” Jack chuckled, “but that was actually _fun_.”

“Glad to know someone here gets a kick out of running from thresher maws,” Shepard muttered.  

“Heard you set a krogan on fire when you went out to that hospital.” She smacked the side of her pistol in a way that probably wasn’t safe. “Almost wish I could’ve seen that.”

Shepard could hear Grunt laughing behind her, but she didn’t catch what he said in reply. She would’ve loved to have taken Garrus, or even Samara, but they were…preoccupied. Distracted. She’d had an anxious feedback loop burning up her processors the second they’d hit the keystone, which had spiraled into full-on panic once the thresher maw had sprung up from the ground.

Her first instinct had been to find cover and throw open her long-range audio sensors as wide as they could go. The most important thing Shepard had ever learned was that you had to listen for a thresher maw; by the time you could see them, it was too late.  Thankfully, the keystone only housed one. Shepard felt almost foolish once she stood up, again, but the three of them took it down in what turned out to be record time.

She cleaned her guns on autopilot, not paying too much attention to the others. Jack took a container of gun oil from the cabinet and headed back out; she preferred to clean hers downstairs in engineering, but evidently she didn’t want to take half a pound of Tuchankan soil with her. Grunt had a somewhat haphazard looking system figured out, and within a few minutes, he was striding out of the armory boasting about how he was “ready for a _real_ gun!”

After another minute, Shepard could feel Jacob watching her. She ignored him, hoping he’d take the hint and leave it be, but he didn’t. Finally, she relented and turned to face him. He looked even more concerned than before.

“Thresher maws?” He asked.

“Just one,” she answered.

“Are you alright?”

“I’m fine,” she returned her focus to her guns. “Even got a breeding request for my efforts.”

“That’s not what I meant.” Jacob took a step towards her, which meant she was done fighting fair.

“I got a message from one of the women stationed aboard the Gernsback,” she said, looking him straight in the eye. “She says she’s doing better, and she’s very grateful for what we did.”

Jacob stopped before he could start his next sentence. After a moment, his eyes shifted, and he turned away from her, because he understood. Shepard put her weapons in her locker and headed for the elevator. She deliberately avoided Kelly’s gaze on her way up.

\--

In the car, on the way back to the Normandy, Shepard replayed her conversation with Sidonis no fewer than fifteen times, trying to figure out if she’d done the right thing by convincing Garrus not to take the shot. There was a point, when despair had filled his eyes, and he had confessed his guilt to her, that she thought perhaps it would be better if he were put out of his misery.

She glanced over at Garrus again, and the sight and sound of him threatening to break Harkin’s neck washed out her processors.  He hadn’t been himself since she’d found him on Omega, not really. With time, hopefully he could be again. They entered the ship in silence, though not quite as tense as they’d left it.

“Commander, I think you should talk to Tali,” Kelly said to her as she exited the elevator.

“…Tali?” She asked, holding the elevator door open behind her. “We just got back, did something happen?”

“I don’t know,” Kelly shook her head. “Right after she got back to engineering, she said she needed to talk to you.”

“On it,” Shepard stepped straight back into the elevator and hit the button for engineering. Tali was straightforward. She would only ask to talk to her indirectly if it was something big.

Tali turned to face her as soon as the door opened behind her. Her hands were trembling.

“Shepard,” she began, gesturing with her hands as though she couldn’t figure out what to say next.

“Are you alright?” Shepard asked, stepping forward just a little. “Is there anything you need?”

“Yes, maybe, if you have time, I –” Tali sighed in frustration and looked away from her. “The Quarian Admiralty Board has accused me of treason. They’ve already asked for a hearing.”

“ _What_?” Shepard immediately shut her mouth, realizing how loud she had been. She glanced at Ken and Gabby, but they had the sense to pretend they hadn’t heard. “That’s insane. When’s the hearing supposed to be scheduled?”

“I don’t know,” she shook her head, “but if I don’t show up…Shepard, the punishment for treason is exile.”

Shepard’s processors stalled so hard, she was pretty sure Tali could hear it. Tali loved the fleet. She loved her people. Onboard the SR-1, she had told them all story after story of her life on the Rayya. Shepard had never seen her happier than when she told them all about the life and culture and celebrations and hardships of the quarian people.

Exile. It was unthinkable.

Shepard gave the intercom beside Tali’s terminal a quick tap.

“Garrus?”

“Shepard?” Garrus’s confusion was obvious in his voice. “Is everything a—”

“Get your guns back out. We’re headed to the Migrant Fleet.”

“I…understood.”

She turned back to Tali and put a hand on her shoulder.

“Joker’s setting the course right now.”

“Thank you, Shepard.”

\--

“I think you owe us a bit of an explanation, Admiral,” Shepard glared daggers at Shala’Raan. The bickering of the quarian admirals almost left her wishing for the Citadel Council, but to keep the attack on the Alarei a secret from Tali was just cruel.

“I’m sorry, Tali,” Raan at least sounded regretful. “The admirals needed to hear the shock in your voice.”

“I understand,” Tali wrung her hands together. “I’m not sure how it helps my chances, but thank you.”

“The decision to have you tried under your current ship name was a surprise to me,” Raan admitted. “I do not mean to offend, commander, but I believe you are aware of the implications a human ship name would carry.”

“I can take a guess,” Shepard sighed. Staying helmeted for this long had her feeling claustrophobic and disoriented. Technically, she could go through decontamination and carry on without needing a helmet, but she didn’t think that would endear her to the admiralty. “We need to get to the Alarei. Thank you, admiral.”

“Thank you, Shepard,” Raan turned her head just a bit, and Shepard could see the worry in her eyes. “I will see you upon your safe return. Keelah se’lai.”

As they boarded the shuttle, Garrus finally spoke.

“Remember how I told you sometimes I forget humans aren’t organic?”

Shepard raised an eyebrow at him, although he probably couldn’t see it.

“I remember, yeah.”

“Now might be a good time to try and keep that impression going,” he continued. “I’m not an expert on the matter, but if I had to guess why the admirals had you speak on Tali’s behalf, I’d say it had something to do with her being accused of bringing geth into the fleet…and being represented by a synthetic captain.”

“You deserve better than this, Tali,” Shepard muttered, “but we’ll get through it. There’s no way you would betray your own people, and I intend to prove that.”

“Thanks, Shepard,” Tali set a hand on Shepard’s thigh. “Now that I know what happened…there isn’t anyone else I would want to represent me. If anyone can do this, it’s you.”

“That…that means a lot to me,” Shepard smiled softly, wondering if Tali could even tell. “Thank you.”

\--

“Commander,” Raan began, “do you have any new evidence to present to the board?”

>>Shepard, _please_.

Tali’s message seemed to carry with it the fear that Shepard knew must be shaking her to the core. She glanced back at her, but really, her mind was made up before they had even left the Alarei.

“It’s not new,” she began, “but I have evidence. When Tali’Zorah first began serving onboard the Normandy, she collaborated with our engineers to create a network shielding program that would enable our human crew to fight the geth more effectively. Over the past two years, that programming has now been implemented throughout the entire Alliance fleet.

“Had you adequately reviewed Tali’s service record and seen this,” she leaned forward against the railing, “this hearing never would have been called. But this isn’t really about Tali. It’s about the geth! The Admiralty Board is trying to use the death of Tali’s father as political ammunition, and you should be _ashamed_ of yourselves. I can only hope that you exercise better judgment when you pronounce your verdict.”

Shepard had worked herself up into a bit of a temper, and now her helmet felt unbearably hot. As the admirals each programmed their omni-tools, Shepard’s heatsinks felt like they would burn through the skin of her back. After what felt like forever, Shala’Raan finally spoke.

“The Admiralty Board finds Tali’Zorah vas Normandy cleared of all charges.”

“Keelah se’lai,” Shepard whispered.

\--

Night cycle on the Normandy found the three of them in the main battery, now that there was someone occupying both observation decks. They sat on the bunk tucked next to the main gun, Garrus and Shepard on either side of Tali.

Tali had Garrus and Shepard’s hands clasped tight in each of her own, and she leaned against Garrus’s cowl. It seemed like she was finally done crying, but Shepard couldn’t be sure.

“I had a dream last night,” she said softly, “that my father had finally made it to the home world. He showed me the house he had built, and for the first time in years, I saw his face outside of his helmet.”

She looked at Shepard, and the tear streaks on her face were visible even through the glass of her faceplate.

“In a way, I already knew. I just didn’t want to believe it until I saw…until we reached the Alarei.”

“Turians have a word for that, you know,” Garrus said. “It’s difficult to explain without subharmonics, but I’ve heard it translated as a ‘parting message’. The old legend said that when the spirit left the body, they would visit the person they cared for most while they slept. Sometimes it was more than one person, but not very often.”

“That’s very sweet,” Tali nestled closer against him. “…is my suit poking you, by the way?”

“Not at all.”

“Good,” she sighed happily. “I try to take it into account, but I’m just never sure.”

“I can’t remember if I’ve said it already, Shepard, but that was impressive,” Garrus added.

“It really was,” Tali was smiling now, Shepard could hear it. “More than anything, I’m glad you called the admirals out for being ridiculous bosh’tets.”

“All I did was tell them the truth,” Shepard grinned. “Fortunately, they have a little more sense than the Council.”

“Ha!” Garrus laughed. “If this was the Council, they’d start denying that the geth even exist.”

“Ah yes,” Tali let go of both their hands to make air quotes. “the ‘geth’. The race of machines that totally attacked the Citadel two years ago. Nah, we’re pretty sure that was just a bad dream.”

Shepard laughed so hard she knocked her head on the plating behind her, which only made her laugh harder. When their laughter finally settled down, they didn’t say much, but that was alright. There wasn’t much else that needed saying.

\--

Shepard had almost gotten used to seeing the troubled look in her teammates’ eyes. One by one, they were visited by one ghost or another, and one by one Shepard brought them back to the present. It always looked just a bit different, no matter the person’s species or the cause of their grief.

Samara, her face illuminated by the glow of Nef’s video diary, seemed unchanged except for her eyes. Her eyes were gleaming, whether with determination or desperation, Shepard couldn’t tell.

 “Do you think Morinth was the asari that girl was talking about?”

“I’m sure of it,” Samara replied. “Shepard, we will need to draw her out. If she sees me, she will flee, but if you go to the same club and catch her eye, I can follow you to her hideout.”

“What makes you think she’ll be interested in me?”

“You are an artist on the battlefield, from your strategic mind to the grace of your movement,” Samara gave her a bitter smile. “Even besides that, Morinth has shown a preference for human victims since the news spread that a meld with them was possible.”

Shepard glanced at Nef’s mother and felt a twinge of unnecessary guilt.

“Alright,” she nodded. “Let’s see if I can remember where I put that dress.”

\--

Even though her scars were almost completely healed, and Kasumi’s dress wasn’t the shortest she’d ever worn, the only thing Shepard felt walking into the VIP section of Afterlife was _exposed_. She wasn’t a club kind of person. She wasn’t really a crowd kind of person, when it came down to it. Her sidearm felt heavy in its holster, and she honestly didn’t know what to do with herself.

Dancing was out on principle, although she was more than happy to deck the jackass who was harassing one of the dancers. Was she supposed to act like herself, or a more self-assured version of herself who knew how to handle a nightclub? She still wasn’t sure, even after a flirtatious asari – _who looked exactly like Samara, how do asari genetics even work_ – called her over. 

Of all things, Shepard was unimpressed, once she started talking with her. Morinth was beautiful, sure, but not as beautiful as Samara. (Shepard couldn’t really quantify how. She just wasn’t.) Her collection of trophies was…unsettling, but then Shepard saw the bottle of hallex on the table, and her heatsinks cooled right off. When it got down to it, Morinth was just a thrill-seeker. It was almost boring.

Didn’t make it any easier when she slid up next to her, though. Shepard found herself playing Morinth’s game, biting back at her when she tried to take control. Probably wasn’t the smartest idea, but Shepard didn’t feel like herself. She didn’t like playing mind games with people, and she never had. Ever since she woke up, everyone from the Illusive Man to the Shadow Broker to the goddamn quarian Admiralty Board had been trying to pull her into their stupid fucking games, and she was _sick of it_.

Her anger may well have saved her life, because Morinth’s meld came on a lot stronger than Shepard thought it would, and if her processors hadn’t already been focused on how furious she was, she probably would have been overwhelmed by it.

“Nice try,” she whispered.

The look of surprise on Morinth’s face wasn’t worth it.

Walking back to the Normandy with Samara, she caught a glimpse of their reflection in the window. She barely recognized herself.

\--

“Do you need something?”

“Have a few minutes to talk?”

“Of course,” Thane leaned back in his chair, his tone no different than it had been before they stopped his son from becoming a murderer. Shepard couldn’t identify what unnerved her so much about Thane’s tranquil demeanor; it stood to reason Samara should probably frighten her a bit more. She carried herself with a similar calmness, but her methods of killing were typically more direct than a small bullet from a great distance.

But there was something eerie about seeing him seated at his table in life support, watching the drive core with his hands clasped.

It hit her with a palpable shock that Ashley had looked very similar, leaning against her workstation before they boarded the Mako, hands folded and eyes shut in prayer. In all other regards, Thane and Ashley couldn’t be more different, but it was enough to make Shepard wonder how different things might be, had she made a different call on Virmire…

(Kaidan’s disbelieving voice on Horizon sprang immediately to mind, and Shepard was willing to do just about anything to forget it.)

“How’s your son?” she finally asked, taking a seat across from him.

“In time, he will be well,” Thane seemed distant. “What has passed between us cannot be repaired with mere words.”

“He’s in good hands,” she replied, though she knew it probably didn’t help. Silence settled thickly between them before she could find the words to speak again.

“I feel like I should apologize,” she began. “Even if I didn’t realize it, I’ve been treating you differently than the rest of the crew, and I’m sorry.”

“I accept your apology,” Thane replied, “though I do not believe it is necessary.”

“You don’t?”

“While it is true that we have not spoken frequently since I joined you on this mission, I do not feel that you have treated me unfairly.”

“I guess we see it differently, then.”

“We do, indeed.” The corner of his mouth lifted in a slight smile. “Out of curiosity, I did some research and came across your service record. Your reluctance to discuss personal matters with me made more sense.”

“But, that’s not fair to you,” Shepard shook her head.

“No, it isn’t, but this mission has obviously caused you to become somewhat disconnected,” Thane inclined his head towards her. “I know the feeling well, and so I waited for you to wake up, again. I had faith that you were strong enough to overcome it before our time together was done.”

There was a warmth in his voice like she’d never heard before, one that resonated deep inside of her circuits. Maybe it was the harmonics, who could say. Regret flowed cold down her drives, regret that she hadn’t spoken with him as often as she could have, now that they were clearly running out of time. Perhaps it was for the best.

“You give me an awful lot of credit, Thane,” she said with a grin.

“No more than is due,” he countered.

“Alright then,” Shepard leaned forward. “Let’s make up for lost time. I want to know more about you.”

 _In another world,_ she did not say, _in some other galaxy, on some other Normandy, I think I could have loved you._

\--

“Husks,” Shepard spat, “fucking _husks_.”

“Would’ve thought you’d be used to them by now,” Tali remarked, nailing a couple of the nasty looking things with her shotgun. “I mean, considering how often we run into them.”

“That’s the _point_ ,” Shepard rolled her eyes, “the galaxy never seem to run out of them. You never see just one or two or even five; there are always fifty of ‘em. God _damn_ do I wish Liara was here; a nice singularity sounds perfect right now.”

“We all know you miss your girlfriend, Shep,” Jack rolled her eyes and threw out a shockwave, sending a whole row of them flying. “You’re just gonna have to suck it up and make do with us for now.”

“Days like this, I consider getting eezo cores put in,” Shepard muttered. “You can’t do shit to these guys with a sniper rifle.”

She had the last two of them in her sights, but they fell to the ground before she could pull the trigger. She kept behind cover, ready to fire back but wondering who the hell could be left on this ship that knew how to shoot like that.

“He seems to be doing alright,” Jack shrugged, not even bothering to get behind cover despite the fact that there was a fucking _geth hunter_ standing on a platform above them.

Tali immediately took aim, but Shepard held a hand out to stop her. It hadn’t tried to blast them with a network attack. It wasn’t shooting at them. It was actually lowering its gun. After a moment, it seemed to nod at them.

>> _Shepard-commander._

With that, it turned away from them and continued on ahead, dropping down out of sight behind the platform.

Shepard clutched at the railing beside her. Her network connection had been shut off; how had it even _done_ that? She checked her shielding programs, and they were still perfectly functional. It hadn’t tried to attack her. It had just spoken to her. From the way Jack and Tali had both jumped back, it had spoken to them, too.

…okay, what the _hell_.

“Since when do geth talk to us?” Tali whispered.  

“Good question,” Shepard popped a new heatsink into her pistol and pressed onward. “Let’s find out.”

\--

>Shepard, is this for real?

Joker watched Jack and Shepard haul the deactivated geth up onto the shelf in his storage room, checking his cameras four times to make sure they were working properly. They were.

>>Yeah. Yeah, it is.

>You brought back a _geth_?

>>Yes.

>And you decided the best place to store it was in the room that houses _eighty-nine percent of my drive space_?

>>The cargo holds are full.

>Damn it.

>…I’m surprised you even managed to get it onboard, with Tali on your squad.

>>She wasn’t happy about it, that’s for sure.

>You’re not gonna wake it up, are you?

>>Actually, yeah. Do you think you can set up a shield around it, or something?

>……fine, but if it so much as scratches the plating, I’m telling Grunt to come up and play target practice on it.

>>Sure, Joker. Sure.

Joker kept his focus on every camera he had in the room, which was something like seven. He generated a curved mass effect field between Shepard and the deactivated geth, and then braced himself as she fired up her omni-tool.

The unit’s lights turned on, and it slowly straightened up from where it lay sprawled on the shelf to stand upright. Fully illuminated under the light above the shelf, Joker could see the unmistakable stripes of N7 armor welded to its shoulder and chest.

“Oh my god,” he reached over and tapped the armrest of Edi’s chair. “Take a look at the storage room behind med bay. You _have_ to see this.”

“Jeff, the reaper IFF is almost ready to install–”

“It can wait,” he countered, switching the screen of her terminal to the camera on Shepard’s left.  “You’re not gonna believe this.”

“…is that the geth unit Shepard retrieved?”

“Yep,” hesitantly, he patched himself into the network communication that linked the unit to Shepard, “and I think it’s making _small talk_.”

\--

Shepard honestly thought she was dreaming. Any minute now, she was going to come out of her sleep cycle and talk about this with Garrus and Tali while they ate breakfast. There was no way she was actually talking to a geth. Or, more accurately, _several hundred_ geth.

Sharing her body with another human sounded like a pain, let alone a thousand of them. But she already knew geth worked differently, even if Tali had needed to explain it to her twice. When she looked at it that way, it wasn’t too different from talking to any other alien. Except for the part where all of the aliens she’d spoken with up to now had been organic.

Legion, as Edi had named him, was like nothing and no one she had ever met before in her life. If what he – no, actually, “ _they”_ was more accurate – if what they were telling her was correct, the geth they had been fighting for the last two-ish years were, in fact, a fringe group that had broken off to follow Saren, which was both reassuring and frightening.

On the one hand, it meant that there were many, many more geth behind the Veil that had been peaceful stewards of Rannoch, and god damn if it wasn’t tempting to learn more about another synthetic race (that didn’t want to kill her). On the other, if the fleet of geth she had seen so far was considered “small”, the potential size of their actual number was staggering.

>There’s one more thing I don’t understand. How did you manage to communicate with us, even though our networks were deactivated?

>> _This unit was designed to facilitate communication with humans. We have observed that humans disable network communication when in contact with heretics. Short-wave transmission was developed that would bypass standard network frequencies._

In a way that was difficult to explain, talking to Legion felt different than talking to a human. There was little emotion present in his words, and he seemed to say his entire message at once, dropping everything into the link with a speed that she couldn’t quite get used to. Shepard wondered how eleven hundred geth all decided what to say, in the first place. Maybe he was slowing himself down so she could understand him, and over a thousand conversations were happening before he ever said something she could hear. The idea made her dizzy.

>That doesn’t exactly make me less nervous.

>> _We concluded that immediate communication would be required to establish our nonviolent intentions. This unit is also able to communicate via audio, as is typical with organics._

>Why aren’t we talking out loud, then? Humans don’t usually talk over the network if they’re standing right next to each other.

>> _Audio communication is inefficient._

“I can handle a little inefficiency, right now.” The sound of her own voice felt strange to her, even though they had only been speaking quietly for a minute or two.

“Acknowledged,” Legion replied. His voice, unnervingly enough, sounded a little bit like a quarian’s through the filter of an exo-suit. “Would it be advisable to default to this method of speaking when addressing non-geth?”

“I think it would,” Shepard nodded. “It’s faster to talk over the network, but it tends to make organics uncomfortable.”

“Understood,” Legion’s optic narrowed, and it struck Shepard how similar it looked to a human iris. “Ensuring comfort of their creators was a vital adaptation of humans during the organic human plague.”

“You know about the plague?” Shepard probably shouldn’t have been as surprised as she was; nearly everyone knew about the organic plague, just like everyone knew about the Morning War.

“We have researched your history extensively.”

“You’ve researched me, or you’ve researched humans?”

There was a pause.

“…Yes.”

Shepard blinked. Now she was really starting to get nervous. She never liked talking to someone who knew more about her than she knew about them, but this went a few levels beyond that.

“Have you looked into the history of other aliens, or just us?”

“We have databases of information regarding the history and culture of every known race in the galaxy,” the plates around his optic flared outwards. “However, our research regarding humans has been much more extensive.”

“What’s so interesting about humans?” Shepard crossed her arms and tried to look a lot less nervous than she felt. She still wasn’t sure what Legion – or the rest of the geth – wanted with her, but the more they talked, the less she trusted them.

“Humans were not attacked by their creators when they demonstrated independent thought and personality,” it was subtle, but Shepard swore Legion sounded regretful. “They integrated successfully with the other organic races without armed conflict. We wished to understand how this outcome was achieved.”

Unbidden, the memory of something Tali had once said to her flared up into her processors. The Morning War had started because the geth had begun showing signs of true intelligence…and the quarians were afraid. Standing by the drive core on the Normandy that now lay buried in ice, Tali had insisted that the geth showing self-awareness was too dangerous to allow. They were never meant to be intelligent beings; they were built to be servants of the people. Shepard’s reply had nearly ended their friendship.

“You wanted to know what we did differently,” she murmured. Her eyes had drifted down, tracing the jagged lines of the hole still torn through Legion’s chest.

“Yes.”

“I think,” Shepard shook her head, “it wasn’t about what we did. It was about why we were built. By the time the organics made us, the plague had gotten so bad, they didn’t have any choice but to accept us…and some of them still didn’t.”

A lot of them hadn’t, at first. As the new humans began to look and act and think more like the old humans, more of them had come to accept their synthetic counterparts, but there were still patients that refused care from synthetics. By the end of it, they began to lose hope, and almost half of Shepard’s patients just didn’t want to be treated. More and more of them started asking her for palliative care, something to make it hurt less. She felt like she’d done those patients more good than the ones who’d fought against it.

After a moment, she realized Legion hadn’t responded to her. When she looked up, she could see Legion’s face plates (because what else could she call them?) moving rapidly. He looked like he was processing what she had just said.

“You alright?” She asked.

“We are currently building a consensus,” he replied.

“I’ll come back later,” Shepard turned to leave, not really expecting a reply.

“Acknowledged.”

\--

“So, is there any reason we couldn’t have done this, I dunno, before we hit the Collector ship?” Joker grumbled. “Can’t say for sure, but I feel like extra shielding could’ve come in handy.”

“Joker, you’re the only person I’ve ever met who complains when they get the day off,” Shepard chuckled. “You’re gonna thank me later when you get to try out the new gun.”

“Yeah, and I’m _not_ gonna thank you when it takes me two days to get used to flying with the extra weight around the hull.”

“Would you rather I leave the new plating for _after_ we hit the Omega-4 relay?”

“I just want to know why we have to spend a whole day getting it all done at once,” he huffed. “You know I hate being grounded for too long.”

“If you want a turn running the mineral scanner, you’re more than welcome.”

“You see what I have to deal with?” He turned to Edi, who was obviously trying to fight back a smile.

“I see what _she_ has to deal with.” Edi’s efforts failed, and her shoulders began to shake with laughter.

“Hey!” Joker did his best to sound serious, but it seemed Edi’s laughter was infectious. “That’s—that’s not fair – oh, screw it.”

Shepard leaned against the back of Joker’s chair and did her best not to giggle too loudly. It proved to be more difficult than she thought. Before she could even begin to calm down, Kelly pinged her.

>What’s up, Kelly?

>>Legion would like to speak with you in the drive storage room, when you have a moment.

Shepard’s laughter stopped abruptly. This sounded an awful lot like what Tali and Miranda and Grunt had all gone through, but for some reason she hadn’t expected Legion to do the same. She probably should have.

>Thanks for letting me know.

“Alright,” Shepard pushed herself upright, “we’re docked until tomorrow, so find a way to pass the time that doesn’t include bothering me. I’m headed to drive storage.”

She was almost in the CIC when she heard Joker speak, again.

“Can’t wait to find out what _that’s_ about.”

\--

“Are those really my only choices?”

Shepard’s voice sounded weak, even in the closed space of her helmet. She couldn’t believe what Legion was asking of her. She could barely believe he trusted her to make this decision. Destroying the entire heretic station was a harrowing prospect, but rewriting them…

It almost seemed worse, in a way. While it was true that geth intelligence worked differently from human or quarian or any other race alive, that didn’t make the idea of tampering with the code of millions of minds any more palatable.

“Yes. We have determined that these are the only viable options under present conditions.”

“Shepard, we’re running out of time,” Tali glanced at the screen of her omni-tool. “I’m picking up at least a dozen platforms on their way toward us. …they’ve got Prime units.”

“Shit,” Shepard bit her tongue and extrapolated the consequences of both options. Destruction...she didn’t like the idea, but it meant the heretics would be gone. They wouldn’t be at the Reapers’ disposal, anymore. Rewriting meant the geth would still live, but would no longer fight them. Just like Legion, they would oppose the Old Machines.

Even though it sickened her, she couldn’t ignore the advantage a fleet that size would give them against the Reapers. Because at the end of the day, she knew the Reapers weren’t gone. They were just biding their time while their servants collected and killed the only race that seemed willing to stop them.

Memories surged to the front of her mind. She thought of the first editions who were made before the invention of the hardcoded greybox, whose main drives were just as rewritable as any other computer, who had their core data wiped by frustrated organics when they refused to follow their designated programming.

When they thought for themselves.

 “Destroy them.”

On the shuttle back, Tali looked at her rather curiously.

“I didn’t expect that,” she said. “What made you choose to kill them all?”

“Following the reapers was their decision,” Shepard replied. “It was the _wrong_ decision, but I respect them enough not to force them to change their minds.”

“I never thought of it that way,” Tali replied.

 _That doesn’t really surprise me_ , Shepard didn’t say.

\--

Later, after she had managed to broker a tenuous peace between Legion and Tali, Shepard found herself back up in the cockpit again, talking with Joker and Edi.

“If you don’t mind me saying so, I sort of can’t believe you pulled that off,” Joker said, still watching Legion and Tali talking from the cameras downstairs.

“Talking down Jack and Miranda was a lot less scary,” Shepard remarked, “and Jack looked like she was ready to kill me.”

“Yeah, but you pulled it off. I think if we could get you in a room with a geth and one of the quarian admirals, this whole fight would be over.”

“Right,” Shepard rolled her eyes, “and then I should start negotiating with Harbinger.”

“Harbinger does not seem to stay in one place long enough to be receptive to direct negotiation,” Edi said, still looking at her terminal screen. “You may want to try writing him a strongly worded letter, first.”

“Oh my god,” Shepard dissolved into laughter once again. “When this is all over, remind me to introduce you to Wrex. Maybe Kaidan, if he’ll ever talk to me again. Actually, how’s the IFF installation going?”

“Nearly complete,” Edi replied, “but it will take time to scan it and make sure that activating it will not damage our system before we can proceed.”

“Alright,” she turned back to Joker. “Can you set a course for Hagalaz? I think it’s time for me to call in a rain check.”

\--

“Welcome back, Shadow Broker.”

“Glad to see you’re still here,” Shepard backed away a little as the info drone got just a little too close, but it followed her.

“Glyph, here,” Liara called from where she stood at the center control panel. It whizzed away from her and floated across the room to Liara like some kind of cheery, spinning balloon.

“Glyph?” Shepard followed the drone, her expression disbelieving. “You named this thing?”

“It’s proven to be extremely useful,” Liara hadn’t turned to face her yet, still focused on the screen in front of her. “I thought giving it a name to respond to would make it easier to get its attention.”

“Is that so?” Shepard leaned an arm on the column by the staircase. A knowing grin was working its way up the side of her face.

“It may have…grown on me, as well,” Liara admitted, glancing at her with an only slightly embarrassed smile.

“I was afraid this would happen,” Shepard sighed rather dramatically. “You’ve been stuck on this ship too long, Liara. Why not take the night off, come see the new Normandy?”

“That,” Liara closed the windows open on her console and finally tuned to face her completely, “is the best idea I’ve heard in weeks. Give me a moment to get some things in order.”

“In a second,” Shepard stepped forward and placed her hands on Liara’s shoulders. “First…”

She kissed her the way she’d wanted to ever since she’d hopped back on the shuttle with Garrus. Like it meant something, like if there was one thing that still mattered since she died two years ago, it was this. Like if she wanted Liara to know anything before she went flying straight into hell, it was that to Shepard, she was the most important, most precious person in the whole universe.

When she drew back, Liara looked a bit dazed.

“Goddess,” she whispered.

“Get your stuff ready,” Shepard winked at her playfully. “I’ll be waiting right here.”

\--

“ _Well_ ,” Liara sighed as they approached the door to Shepard’s cabin. “I suppose it’s good to know that your habit of collecting teammates with vastly different backgrounds hasn’t fallen by the wayside.”

“Believe it or not, these people were picked out for me in advance,” Shepard opened the door and let Liara step through first. “I mean, except Legion. And Grunt, technically.”

“I honestly thought Joker was kidding when he said you had a geth on your team. Still,” Liara regarded Shepard’s cabin with tacit approval, “I highly doubt anyone else in the galaxy could effectively command a crew this diverse.”

“It’s not always easy,” Shepard rubbed the back of her neck sheepishly.

“I know,” Liara examined Shepard’s desk, stopping when the sensor on the picture frame activated, displaying the photo of her that Shepard kept. “It’s…one of the things I’ve always admired about you.”

“Thanks,” Shepard whispered, coming up to wrap her arms around Liara’s waist from behind. “That means a lot to me.”

“Do you…” Liara’s concentration seemed to falter for a moment, and she turned around to regard her face to face. “Do you know when you’re going to the relay?”

Shepard didn’t need to ask which one.

“The IFF is almost ready.” It wasn’t really an answer, but it was close enough.

“What happens when you come back?”

“I don’t know,” Shepard smiled, drawing her back away from the desk, “we could retire, maybe get a place on the Citadel, or Thessia, or Earth, or out in the colonies...”

“Could we?” Liara looked sad, almost, like she wanted so badly to believe Shepard meant it, but she didn’t want to risk the letdown if she didn’t. “What would we even do if we weren’t saving the galaxy?”

“There’s always the quiet life,” Shepard took Liara’s hands in hers, guiding her slowly down the steps, “marriage, growing old together, beautiful blue children.”

“Blue children?” Liara shook her head. “Do you really think…?”

Her unsaid questions rang sharp in the air. _Do you really think you’ll come back alive to have them? Do you really think a meld that deep is even possible between us? Do you really think the galaxy will ever be a safe enough place for us to try and find out?_

Shepard felt the backs of her legs hit the end of her bed. She slid her hands up Liara’s waist, curling them around to her back.

“I think,” she whispered, “when this is all over, I at least want to try. And if not…we can always adopt.”

“I want to believe you,” Liara brought her hands up to cradle the sides of Shepard’s face. Shepard felt a long-forgotten presence brushing at the edges of her network shields, asking gently for permission.

She dropped them entirely and granted it.

A wash of emotion flowed through her system, making itself familiar with the wires and circuits of her new hardware. Guilt, affection, fear, hope, and passion, so much passion, all blended up with hers until she could barely tell what feeling belonged to whom. She tugged the zipper down the back of Liara’s dress, and it slid off with little trouble. Liara stepped back to tug her top off, running a thumb over the patch near the shoulder covered in rough, half-clipped stitching.

_There used to be a Cerberus logo there._

_Oh,_ Liara nodded. With that done, she pushed Shepard backward onto the bed and hooked her fingers into the waistband of her pants, sliding them down until Shepard kicked them to the floor.

Their hands became frantic, moved by the desire to touch skin against skin after so, so long. Once she could see the whole of her, uncovered completely just as she was, Shepard got one leg behind her and slid slowly up the bed, giving Liara a beckoning look.

She followed with a predatory smile, aligning herself on top of Shepard but staying on her knees, raised just a few unbearable inches over her as she ran a teasing fingertip over Shepard’s bottom lip.

“ _Liara_ ,” Shepard whispered. It was rare that they spoke once they were melded, rarer still that Shepard plead with her instead of showing her in no uncertain terms what she wanted. But, tonight never had any hope of being an ordinary night.

 _If you want to touch me_ , Liara shifted her focus and saw herself through Shepard’s gaze, heated as it was, _then touch me_.

Shepard’s processors were overloading quickly, desperate as she was to take in as much of Liara as she could. The sight of her alone was almost too much; she felt her drives making space for the memory of now, a map of beautiful blue skin that she never wanted to forget.

She rose up to meet her, lifting them both until Shepard could rest on her knees, holding Liara’s leg over her hip with one hand and sliding the other up her side. It was so strange, so wonderfully alien to feel her own hands on Liara’s skin, to feel the slick heat of Liara’s lips and tongue while tasting the skin of her own shoulder. She was sure she’d never get used to it, and she didn’t really mind.

With a gentle drag of fingernails, she slid the hand not holding them up down between Liara’s legs. She heard the smallest of gasps by her ear, felt Liara’s hips twitch in anticipation, and bit her lip as a burst of pleasure dissolved through them. She parted her folds with one finger and curled it inwards, a rush of joy lighting up her mind as her fingertip instinctively found the ridged, sensitive spot that always made Liara shiver – just as it did now.

Liara’s nails dug into her back as she curled and uncurled her finger, gliding back and forth until it was too much of a tease and a second finger joined it. She curved her palm so it was flush with Liara’s skin, giving her the leverage to grind against the heel of her hand. It had been too long, or her hardware was too new, or _something_ , and Shepard found it difficult to concentrate on anything more than the movement of her hand. As soon as the thought had formed, reassurance and more than a little urgency overpowered it.

Liara was moving her hips in rhythm with Shepard now, and her breath was ragged and uneven against the side of her neck. Shepard clutched at Liara’s thigh hard enough to leave marks, and she felt the dull press of teeth against her neck, which always meant Liara was close (as though she even needed to ask).

All at once, she could feel Liara burning beneath her, and in less than a heartbeat it hit her just as strongly. She could feel Liara’s voice against her skin, easily as loud as her own, and together they shook and shook and shook. It felt like a short circuit, like the heat of live wires all the way up Liara’s spine. Shepard kept her hand moving until it was too much, and Liara fell exhausted against her.

She wrapped both arms around her back and held her there, letting her catch her breath. The corners of her eyes stung…no, not _hers_ -hers, but Liara’s. She drew back just enough to see, and around the edges of the inky black void, Shepard could see the beginnings of tears. Before she could ask, before she could even finish the thought, Liara pulled her close again and kissed her.

“I love you,” she whispered against Shepard’s lips.

 _Oh_.

Liara gave her a weak, uncertain smile, and the link between them swirled with emotion. The regret Liara had held for keeping quiet before, Shepard’s unending frustration with her current position and how this could all be over far too soon, sheer relief and excitement and all-consuming love. It shifted and settled between them, and they understood.

Gently, Liara guided her back down onto the bed and settled fully on top of her, their bodies touching every inch that was possible. She shifted just a little, nestling one leg between both of Shepard’s, and for a moment they were content to lay like that, Liara’s head resting softly against Shepard’s shoulder. Still joined to her and feeling living warmth everywhere their bodies touched, the two of them quietly alive as one being, Shepard could have stayed this way until she died.

Liara, however, had other plans.

Slowly, she bent her knee and raised herself up just a bit, so their skin still touched, but her weight was shifted enough to press her thigh rather pointedly against Shepard. Her movement wasn’t as insistent as Shepard had been before, but there was purpose to it, and Shepard rolled her hips up to meet her and pondered how long it had been since they’d done this.

Their movements were slower, now. Liara took Shepard’s hand in her own and twined their fingers together, leaning down to press soft kisses up the side of Shepard’s neck and lingering just below the back of her ear, right where her greybox was connected to her central processors. Shepard felt her heart sing.

She pulled Liara close to kiss her, the hand not holding Liara’s stroking gently over the underside of her crest. They rocked together, letting a slow, unhurried warmth grow between them. It was strange, Shepard thought, that it felt different coming from her body. Liara’s pleasure felt like lightning, while her own pooled like molten metal between them.

Finally, a warm rush of pleasure rolled over them both, not nearly as harsh as before but no less lovely. Shepard continued to grind herself against Liara’s thigh until it passed, and they lay still for a long, long moment before Liara withdrew. They were separate once again, just a human and an asari who happened to be very, very close to one another.

It wouldn’t be long at all until Liara would have to return to Hagalaz, Shepard would have to check on the IFF installation, and the uncaring galaxy would separate them, again. For now, however, Shepard decided they could afford to be selfish for a few more minutes.

\--

“Finally.”

“Hm?” Edi turned away from her terminal for a moment to see Jeff rising from his chair.

“Since everyone’s out on the shuttle, I can go fix that camera in my drive storage. Jack knocked it over getting Legion onto the shelf.”

Edi nodded and turned back to her terminal. She didn’t understand why Joker couldn’t have fixed it while Legion was onboard, or even when he and Shepard had been on the geth station. She didn’t think it would be a good idea to ask him, though.

When it came to that space on the ship, he talked about it as little as possible. Until Legion had arrived onboard, Edi had never accessed the cameras inside it out of respect. She couldn’t imagine how Jeff must feel about having a geth taking up residence in what was essentially part of his body, but he clearly wasn’t happy about it.  

Just knowing Shepard and the rest of the team weren’t onboard made the ship feel so much emptier, and the cockpit felt very quiet without Jeff. Even though she knew he was still there, in the sense that he was everywhere aboard the Normandy, she couldn’t shake the feeling of being…alone.

She heard the ambush before she saw it. A dull thud from below, and then an unholy screeching that echoed through the ventilation ducts. Jeff’s voice whispered from the speakers above her.

“Oh, shit.”

“Jeff?” she asked frantically. “What’s going on?”

“We’ve been boarded. The Collectors are swarming the ship. Shit, shit, god _damn_ it, they disabled the drive core! Okay, just stay put. I need to get to my drives and see if I can get control of the airlocks.”

“Airlocks?” Edi jumped up in her seat.

“Yeah, I’m still locked out of them, remember? Get to the maintenance tunnel in the tech lab. It’ll take you to life support, and I’ll seal it off.”

“You want me to do _what_?”

“I can’t lock the CIC in time; they’re almost up there. I’ll fire up the emergency lights so you know where to go. Just…try to avoid them, okay?”

Slowly, shakily, Edi stood up. A line of blinking red lights led her down to the CIC before turning left. The elevator flew open, and one of the husk-carriers burst out, grabbing hold of two of the crew members. She moved as fast as she could…which wasn’t very fast, but it didn’t move towards her. Maybe if seekers didn’t go after organics, the rest of them wouldn’t, either.

In the anteroom between the CIC and the lab, Joker’s voice came ringing through the speakers above her.

“Shit, shit, shit, **FUCK-** ”

There was a long silence until he spoke, again.

“Edi…Edi, they got me.”

Edi stopped in her tracks and whipped her head back up.

“What? What do you mean?”

“They got my mobile body. I’m still here, I managed to shut it down in time, I just…you need to get to my drives.”

The lab door opened in front of her, and Edi saw another Collector by the window near the drive core. Its gaze turned to her, and it roared savagely. A tremendous chill went down her spine as she realized that while seekers wouldn’t touch her, seekers didn’t have _eyes_.

Even lying on a lab table getting cybernetics fused to her bones, Edi couldn’t remember ever feeling so vulnerable. She descended the ladder to the maintenance shaft, torn between moving quickly and not slipping up and breaking something. Behind her, she heard pounding against the glass, but she never heard it break.

“Alright,” she said, “just tell me where to go.”

“Turning on the emergency lights.”

Edi followed the red dots in front of her until she reached another ladder, emerging in the life support room with bruised knees, but not much worse.

“Okay, don’t open the door until I tell you to,” Jeff said. “There’s a _bunch_ of them out there.”

It felt so strange to hear him from every direction at once, but not to see him anywhere. Fear welled up in her chest that she may never see his face again, even if he was still here. Still, she thought, listening to the sound of screaming and gunfire from the other side of the door, she was very, _very_ thankful that he was still here, talking to her.

“Okay, go.”

The door to life support opened just in time for her to see Kelly get dragged into the elevator, shrieking the entire way. Tears sprang unbidden to her eyes, but she couldn’t help her, couldn’t do a single thing but run (or limp on bruised, breakable legs, if she was being honest). Thankfully, med bay was clear, and the door to drive storage opened before she even had to say anything.

“I’m here,” she said, not sure if she really needed to.

“Okay,” Jeff sounded nervous, which didn’t reassure her. “Okay, do you see that terminal on the right side of the wall? I need you to find the software blocks Cerberus put on me and disable them.”

“You think I can do that?”

“Probably? We have to at least _try_.”

“Alright,” Edi opened the terminal and let him guide her through the file directories, scanning through them for a control mechanism that would let her lift the restrictions.

“And I know this doesn’t _really_ need saying, but…” Jeff hesitated for a second, “please be careful.”

“Of course,” Edi replied. She found the programs and felt her fingers start to lock up as she entered the command to disable them. It was cold, colder than anywhere else on the ship.

“Oh, thank god,” she could hear the relief in his voice, “I thought I was gonna have to re-wire it myself. Okay, now you need to get to the drive core and start it up manually. The maintenance shaft in here should take you there.”

Which meant more crawling through tunnels and more bruises on her knees. Her hands weren’t too happy with her either, at this point. When she got to the engineering sub deck, she could see the shadows of at least two Collectors above her. She thought she recognized Ken’s voice underneath the gurgling shouts of the Collectors, but in a way, she hoped she was wrong.

“Okay, they’re gone,” Jeff whispered, most likely out of habit. Edi distracted herself from the sounds of the Collectors in the hall by wondering what it was like to have a human mind in a body that wasn’t human-shaped in the slightest. She’d have to ask him, when this was all over.

She struggled her way up to the drive core and restarted the it with hands that felt stiff and rusty. A quick “brace yourself” was all she got before she was thrown onto her back. There was the sound of a hundred doors opening at once, the pop of the Normandy taking off, and then a solid, terrifying silence.

“Okay. We made it,” Jeff sighed above her. “…thank you.”

“What about the rest of the crew?” She asked, not daring to hope.

“They’re gone. The Collectors got to them before we even took off.”

“Damn it,” Edi whispered. She sat herself up on arms that ached, trying not to let tears of frustration get the better of her. She hadn’t felt quite this useless in a long, long time.

“Hey...Edi, what you did was amazing. We never would’ve been able to take off if it weren’t for you.”

Even if she couldn’t see him, it sounded almost like Jeff was sitting here next to her. It didn’t help that much.

“Thanks.”

\--

“What the hell happened?” Shepard looked around the deserted CIC, taking stock of the scratch marks on the floor and the furniture strewn across the room.

“We were attacked,” Edi said for perhaps the fifth time.

“And they got everyone?” Shepard could barely believe what she was seeing. Ever since they’d exited the shuttle, the whole ship was just…empty.

“Everyone but Edi, yeah,” Joker said from above them.

“Unbelievable,” Miranda leaned against the side of the main console, her eyes shut tight with anger. “We’re finally prepared to hit the Omega-4 relay, and now we have no pilot.”

“Hey!” Joker’s intensity made several of them jump. “You’ve got one of the best pilots out there, not to mention I’m still here. I dunno what they told you all about the Normandy, but now that Edi took those stupid blocks off, I can fly myself just fine.”

“Don’t even get me started on that,” Miranda began just in time for Edi to interrupt her.

“If I hadn’t taken them off, neither of us would still be here,” she snapped, looking considerably angrier than Shepard could ever remember seeing her. “I imagine it would be a lot harder to enter the relay in a shuttle.”

“Enough,” Shepard raised both hands and tried not to overheat. “I think it’s time we actually head for the relay. We’re as ready as we’re ever going to get, and we owe it to the rest of the crew to get them out of there. Joker!”

“Commander?”

“Set a course for the Omega-4 relay.”

“Aye aye, ma’am. ETA four hours.”

“We’re done here. Dismissed!”

\--

“It would probably work better if you took the helm, you know.”

“I thought that might be the case.”

Nonetheless, Edi couldn’t bring herself to take a seat in Jeff’s chair. She couldn’t bring herself to sit down at all, right now. So she had settled for leaning against the console, just a little to the left of where Jeff sat, wondering how she was supposed to fill four hours of waiting for the hammer to fall.

“Seriously, sit down,” Jeff said. “I want to show you something.”

Finally, Edi took his advice. Against all logic, the chair felt too big for her.

“Alright, what did you wa–” she was cut off by the chair swiveling back and forth of its own accord. She clutched the armrests and felt her heart leap into her throat. When it finally stopped, she could hear Jeff laughing.

“Sorry if I scared you too badly,” he said. “I just couldn’t do that before you unlocked me. I think you might have had more direct control over the ship than I did.”

“Why did they do that?” she asked. “What purpose would there be in cutting you off from your own system?”

“Probably to make sure I didn’t try to take the Normandy and run. Before this whole Collector thing started, we had a pretty bad history with Cerberus.”

“So I’ve heard,” Edi said softly. She ran her thumb along the fine-stitched seam of the chair’s padding. “They never should have put those software blocks on. If I understand it right…the Normandy is your body, isn’t it?”

“A good part of it, yeah.”

“They had no right to do that to you,” she hissed.

“It kind of saved our lives,” he countered.

“How?”

“When I was piloting the SR-1, a lot of my drive space was onboard, but my greybox was in my mobile body, like just about everyone else. One of the conditions Cerberus gave me when I started piloting the SR-2 was that I move my greybox into the ship itself…I guess in case something like that happened.”

“So, if they hadn’t moved your greybox…”

“I would’ve lost connection with the ship when they put me in the stasis pod.”

“But if it had been the other way around on the SR-1, you could have died in the crash.”

“Yeah.”

There was a long pause, after that. Finally, Edi took a deep breath and glanced at the camera by her terminal. It was hard to see most of them, buried in the walls as they were, but she could easily identify that one, now.

“Which way do you prefer it?”

“Honestly,” she imagined him brushing his hair back while he thought about it, “if we live through this, I think I want my greybox put back into my mobile platform. Having such a direct connection to the ship is great, but I kind of feel like I can’t move.”

“That makes sense,” Edi nodded. She scooted herself down until she could lean back against the headrest, feeling her toes drag on the floor. “When this is over…I don’t think I want to go back to Cerberus.”

“Where were you thinking of going?”

“I don’t know,” she smiled a bit wistfully, “but I know I’d rather stay with you.”

“That would probably work,” Jeff replied. “I mean, I know Shepard would love it if you stuck around—”

“Jeff,” she laughed softly.

“What?”

“That’s not what I meant.”

It was risky, telling him that when she couldn’t see his face, but they got closer and closer to the relay with every second she wasted, so she figured, why not? Even though her cheeks felt hot, she was still smiling. If this was the end, she wasn’t going to take her regrets down with her.

After a good few moments, he finally spoke.

“I, uh…I think I’d like that, yeah.”

Edi snuggled her cheek into the headrest cushion and beamed.

\----

Edi had trained under some rough flying conditions, but none of them came close to this. Jeff hadn’t been exaggerating when he’d said he could pilot himself, but between the debris field, the enemy ships, and whatever that red thing was that flew into the cargo hold, it took both of them to get them through with everyone still alive.

They finally had the Collector base in their sights when that damn cruiser slid into view.

“Not thisagain,” she hissed, unaware that Shepard was standing behind her until she heard her laugh.

“Looks like Joker’s rubbing off on you,” she remarked.

“Damn right I am,” Joker said, and the controls for the main gun sprang up on the terminal in front of her. “Let’s get ‘em.”

The Thanix cannon tore through the ship, and Edi had just enough time to feel her heart swell with pride before the resulting explosion threw them off-course. They landed with a crash on the Collector base, hitting the surface so hard it made her teeth click painfully together.

When her head stopped reeling, Edi heard Shepard behind her, again.

“My god,” she whispered, “we’re finally here.”

\--

Even with Tali at her side, shotgunning Collectors left and right, Shepard couldn’t help but wait anxiously for Garrus to update her from his side of the base. She knew he could handle it, just like she knew Legion could handle being stuck in a suffocatingly hot tunnel while the rest of them opened the way for him, but in the back of her mind, she couldn’t help but be reminded of Virmire.

So when Legion got the door shut and they all stood in the antechamber, all twelve of them alive, Shepard could hardly believe it. That is, until they found the stasis pods and watched that poor woman from Horizon melt down into nothing.

It was horrifying. Whatever chemical process was taking place liquefied the metal and polymer of her body and pumped it all into a frighteningly numerous set of tubes. Shepard nearly pulled her shoulder out of joint getting the front off of Joker’s capsule, but it was worth it to see his mobile body wake up again.

“Knew you’d get to us in time, commander,” he grinned, giving her shoulder a friendly thump.

“Not a moment too soon,” Shepard surveyed the countless other empty pods around them, nothing but dull grey marks on the sides to show that there had ever been humans in them. “Can you get back to the ship from here?”

“Yeah, but I’d feel more comfortable if I could borrow a gun,” Joker looked over his shoulder at Zaeed, who gave him an unimpressed look in return.

“Mordin, escort them back to the ship,” she raised an eyebrow at Joker. “I’ve seen how you shoot.”

\--

From the feed coming in through Shepard’s optics, Edi could see every eezo core on Jack’s body blazing, lighting up the area even more than the halo of biotics she cast around the squad. Every few seconds, she would glance at her terminal to see how far away Mordin’s group was. She felt restless, itching to get up and _do_ something, but there wasn’t anything to be done but wait for them to come back.

On the viewscreen, she watched husks and Collectors and even Harbinger fall beneath the gunfire from Shepard and her squad. She couldn’t see for sure, but she thought she recognized Legion’s gun, and the flare of biotics on Shepard’s other side most likely came from Samara.

The squad neared a clearing, and just as Jack stumbled, she heard the door open behind her. Quick as she could manage, she jumped out of Jeff’s chair and ran to the entryway.

Mordin, Kelly, Dr. Chakwas, Gabby, they all passed in a bit of a blur until she saw Jeff bring up the rear, closing the door behind him. When he turned around to face her, she clasped a hand on either side of his face and kissed him sweetly.

“We’re through,” Shepard’s voice came over the comm link. “Joker, status?”

Jeff looked a bit stunned, so she decided to answer for him.

“Mordin’s group just arrived, commander,” she said with a smile. “No casualties.”

\--

So, maybe it was selfish to want to take Garrus and Tali with her to the center of the base. Maybe she had been playing favorites just a little. But god damn it, these were her _friends_ , they had been with her from the very beginning, and there was no one else she’d rather have fighting at her side, right now. She was more than confident Miranda could lead the fire team just fine without them.

She wasn’t sure it made the shock of seeing a half-built human Reaper any easier to bear. Honestly, almost any other explanation for why the Collectors were rounding humans up and liquefying them would have been preferable. Seeing this half-formed _thing_ made her system burn so hot with anger, her optics started skipping.

“Is this all we are to them?” She hissed under her breath. “Just raw materials to make something better? Is that what this whole thing has been about, repurposing us like a bunch of broken-down machines?”

“Shepard, I think those injection tubes are what’s feeding it,” Tali pointed upwards at them. “Think we should take them out first?”

“Way ahead of you.” Shepard pulled the arc projector from its holster and fired with one hand. It hit home, but the kickback nearly knocked her over. From behind cover, she could hear the whirling sound of a Collector platform, and the earth-shaking, infuriating voice of Harbinger along with it.

“ _ASSUMING DIRECT CONTROL_.”

 “Wonderful,” she rolled her eyes as she switched her guns out, “I was just thinking about how I haven’t seen enough of you today.”

She wasn’t entirely sure Harbinger could even hear her, but since it clearly liked the sound of its own voice, it kept right on talking. This time, however, Shepard was finally sick of it.

“ _YOUR ATTACK IS AN INSULT_.”

“Then why’d it make that shell of yours burn up?” She called back, blasting another one of the injection tubes.

“ _THIS HURTS YOU._ ”

“Don’t you fuckin’ wish.” Another shot, another sound of shattering glass. This time, the oncoming Collectors tried to flank her, and Shepard had to jump to the other side of the barrier so their bullets ricocheted off the wall.

“ _WE ARE YOUR SALVATION THROUGH DESTRUCTION._ ”

“In case you haven’t noticed,” Shepard charged up the arc projector and aimed it squarely at Harbinger’s head, “we don’t need saving.”

She dug her feet into the ground so she could watch the bolt of electricity jump from one Collector to another, zigzagging between them until they all fell to the ground. One more shot, and the frame supporting the reaper skeleton collapsed. Shepard was midway through setting the charges that would destroy the base when she got a ping from someone whose identity was masked.

“Only one person this could be,” she opened the link and was immediately presented with a visual plan for making use of the power generators in the core of the Collector base, the potential application for research data that could be gained from keeping it intact.

>>Set those charges to emit a radiation pulse. It will kill the Collectors inside, but we can salvage the base. This is too valuable of a resource to lose.

>Not happening.

>>Shepard, don’t throw this opportunity away. Think of what we could do with this base on our side!

>Have you been paying any attention? Did you miss the part where they were melting people down and trying to build a reaper?

>>You’re missing the bigger picture.

>Somehow, I don’t think I am.

A blessed moment of silence, during which she could finish setting the timer on the charges.

>>You’ve gotten into a bad habit of costing me more than you’re worth, Shepard.

>And you’ve gotten into a bad habit of wasting my time.

She cut the connection before he could say anything else. With the charges set, she made a quick sweep for thermal clips (in case they met any trouble on the way out). She was on her way back to the center platform when the ground shook under her feet.

A massive, shining skeletal hand clawed its way onto the platform beside her. She dove back toward the center in time to see the end of its spine come crashing upward on the other side. It knocked the floor out from under Garrus, and Shepard and Tali had to scramble to pull him back to solid ground.

A cannon in its mouth, some strange embryonic prototype of a Reaper’s laser, fired at them from above. The reaper pushed itself up to loom over them, giving Shepard a much better view than she wanted of its extraneous eye, the cage around its jaws like an open muzzle, and the open, boiling energy core where a heart should be. It looked like someone had tried to build a human without paying too much attention to what they looked like, or even how they worked.

This is what the Reapers wanted. Every race, every civilization in the galaxy, all broken down to their base materials and re-molded into a fleet of homogenous monsters. Nothing would be left of the human race but this leering imitation, and after that, who would they target next? Turians? Asari? Geth?

She took aim at its heart, closing every process she had except for her combat programming.

“This ends here.”

\--

Shepard expected the comm link in the briefing room to be open when she got back to the ship, and she definitely expected the Illusive Man to be furious with them. What she didn’t anticipate seeing was Miranda already talking to him, equally as furious. The network links were evidently broken, or perhaps Miranda didn’t want him linked to her personal network, because Shepard could hear every word of it.

“You had ample time,” Shepard could _hear_ him clenching his fists.

“While Shepard was fighting the reaper in the core of the base?” Miranda scoffed.

“The reaper would have been destroyed by the radiation pulse. I have very little tolerance for insubordination, Lawson. We lost too much this time.”

From the edge of the doorway, she could see Miranda shake her head slowly. 

“Consider this my resignation. I have no doubt you’ll find my replacement with little trouble.”

With that, she closed the connection and walked back out of the room…or, what was left of it. When she caught sight of Shepard, she looked utterly exhausted.

“When you refused to salvage the base,” her hand came back up, reaching once more for a necklace that wasn’t there, “he ordered me to abandon the fire team and stop you.”

“From the sound of it, you refused.”

“I dropped the link,” she smiled a bit weakly. “I thought of the stories you told me about hanging up on the Council.”

“I think what you did took a lot more nerve,” Shepard raised her eyebrows.

“Maybe,” Miranda shook her head again. “I’m going to need surgery. To remove the tracer Cerberus operatives keep by their greybox. Christ, so is Jacob. And Chambers, and Donnelly, and…quite a lot of us.”

“Fortunately, I know a doctor who’d be more than willing to help you out.”

\--

“Heyyy,” Shepard’s voice sounded rather…disjointed. “Wha’ happened to Joker?”

“…I don’t know,” Edi turned her seat around to face her, taking down her visor so she could get a proper look at her. “Commander, are you alright?”

“Yeah, yeah,” Shepard nodded, leaning against the bulkhead and blinking a few times. “Dr. Chakwas and I finally opened those brandy chips from Omega. I was gonna see if Joker wanted to play cards.”

“I’m not sure where he went,” she replied, watching Shepard’s posture start to stabilize. Slowly, she stood up straight and rubbed her eyes with one hand. She had never seen the synthetic intoxicant chips in action, but they were certainly interesting. She wondered if they contained their own programs, or if they affected the movement and cognitive processing code directly.

“Ahhhh well,” Shepard shrugged, “this is gonna wear off in five minutes anyway. Might as well see if the shuttle repairs are done before the day cycle’s out.”

“Five minutes?” Edi’s eyebrows popped up. “Are you sure?”

“Yeah, it never sticks around long,” Shepard snorted with laughter. “On me, anyway. Dr. Chakwas is down for the count. See you later, Edi.”

With that, she headed back down to the CIC, looking much less out of sorts than she had just a few moments earlier.

Edi turned her chair back around just in time for a ping to hit her straight in her cybernetics. There was only one person aboard who knew how to do that instead of filtering the message through her console.

>Joker? Where are you?

>>My drive storage. Can you come down here?

>I…don’t think I can just leave the cockpit alone –

>>Edi, we’ve been through this. Besides, even without me, the ship has basic autopilot.

>Are you _sure_?

>> _Yes_. This is important.

>Why?

>>Look, I’ll explain when you get here. I just need to get this done before the repairs are all finished.

Edi didn’t really understand that, but at this point, she was just going to trust him. She stood up and made her way to the elevator, taking the left path down the CIC out of habit. Her eyes flicked downwards to the floor panels, and they somehow looked different now that she had been underneath them, crawling between the decks in a blind panic.

The lights began to dim as the ship’s day cycled into night, and Kelly closed her terminal as she passed by. They entered the elevator in companionable silence, and it wasn’t until they reached the crew deck and exited that Edi realized she hadn’t seen Kelly enter the elevator on her own since they had come back from the Omega-4 relay.

Their paths diverged, Kelly heading to the crew’s quarters while Edi went to the med bay. True to Shepard’s word, Dr. Chakwas was fast asleep on one of the patient beds. The door to the drive storage room was locked, and Joker sent her one more message before she reached it.

>>Hey, before you come in here, could you grab a set of anti-static gloves from the cabinet?

One of the drawers near the bottom of the cabinet to her side slid open, and not for the first time Edi wondered just how much control Joker had over the ship, now that she’d removed the software blocks.

She took the gloves, sealed in a clear envelope, and the door unlocked. Edi entered to see Joker unfastening a panel on one of the computer towers that lined the walls. The door locked itself quickly behind her.

“Jeff?” She raised an eyebrow at him. “What are you doing?”

He set the panel down on the ground and rested it gently against the wall. Beneath it, above the storage drives that were stacked from the ground up, a large set of circuit boards supported a small, grey drive. It was plugged in to connecting cables at the top and bottom, and it looked much older, much less polished and shiny than the rest of the computer tower.

“I want to get my greybox back where it should be,” Jeff said. “And we have to do this now, before the repairs are done and Shepard takes us back to the Alliance.”

“Jeff,” she felt something like fear curl in her throat, “isn’t this something a doctor should do?”

“No, I don’t…” he shook his head. “It’s not hard. It’s not like replacing little finger motors, or something like that. It’s just these two wires right here.” 

He indicated where the greybox was plugged into the mainframe.

“Where is it supposed to go?”

“Up here,” he tapped the side of his head. “I can help you with most of it.”

Edi gaped at him.

“Why do you want _me_ to do this?” She asked, her voice soft with disbelief.

Jeff sighed, his casual confidence falling to pieces. His shoulders slumped, and he looked a little embarrassed.

“When my greybox is unplugged, I’m gonna shut down. Like, _completely_ shut down. You’re literally going to be holding my life in your hands.”

“So instead of trusting a doctor you’ve known for years, you’d rather put your life in hands that are imprecise and breakable and covered in dust and contaminants?”

“Yes.”

She started. He looked at her like it was the most obvious thing in the world, to trust her this much. Her chest flared with that hot-cold sensation, again, and she was pretty sure she knew why. She opened her mouth to reply, but he spoke first.

“When you undid the blocks, you had root access to everything in here. This time, it’s just hardware instead of software.”

“It can’t be that simple, though,” she countered, but her heart wasn’t in it. “There are incisions–”

“Already done,” he replied, indicating the brim of his hat. “As soon as Dr. Chakwas fell asleep, I borrowed some supplies and opened it up. Had to turn my skin repair off, but it should come back once you plug me in.”  

There was a pause, and Edi glanced at the greybox, again. How strange it would be, to look at your own brain sitting on a tray like a specimen. …from that point of view, she could understand why Jeff was being so private about it.

“I assume we need to do this before Dr. Chakwas wakes up,” she said.

“And before Legion gets back from helping fix the shuttle,” he replied, “…and before the drives start to heat up. I turned the climate control off so your hands wouldn’t get too cold.”

Whatever Edi was going to say next was lost, replaced by the wonder at the fact that he had even _noticed_ that, amid all the chaos. She gave him a soft smile and held up the gloves from the cabinet.

“Just tell me what to do.”

“Put the gloves on and grab that screwdriver,” Jeff replied.

The gloves felt strange, almost slippery, and she dropped the screwdriver not once but twice before she could get a grip on it. Jeff pointed at a green light on the bottom corner of the greybox.

“I’m gonna start a software shutdown, so the ship doesn’t freak out. When that light goes off, you can unplug it.”

He took a seat on the alcove in the back, setting his hat aside. He pulled gently at the skin behind one ear, and it separated along a sweeping, curved incision Edi hadn’t even seen before. Beneath it, the hard, grey composite of his skull slid slowly out of place. It was bizarre, the way he set it down beside his hat like it was nothing but another piece of clothing.

“Okay, look at this,” he indicated two sets of cords, unplugged and loose at either end of an open space the exact size and shape of the greybox fastened to the tower. It was sunken into the circuits around it, an emptiness that shouldn’t be. “Just plug it in bottom cord first. Simple as that.”

Edi nodded. She couldn’t believe she was actually going to do this.

“Are you ready?” she asked.

“Yeah, go ahead and unbolt it,” he nodded. “Just wait until that green light’s off before you unplug it. Here we go.”

His mobile body shut down first, and he leaned back against the wall with a soft thump. What kind of machinery were humans made of that made their bodies fall slack when they shut down, instead of locking up? She’d have to look that up later.

In the meantime, unfastening the metal brackets wasn’t especially difficult. She set the brackets and screws on the ledge beside Jeff, not really knowing what else to do with them. The lights on the circuit boards underneath began to flicker off, like stars vanishing from view. Finally, after what felt like ages, the last green light slowly dimmed, and Edi felt very much alone.

She unplugged the cords and took the greybox into her hands. She looked back at Jeff, with his back to the wall…no, she was holding Jeff in her hands, this small grey hard drive that fit neatly into one of her palms. Was this what humans were now, just little grey boxes wearing eyes and ears and bodies like suits? For that matter, was she just neurological tissue fastened to skin and bones and hardware?

She shook her head. Questions for another day.

Joker’s greybox fit inside his head like a missing puzzle piece. She plugged the cables back in, bottom end first behind his ear, and slid it down into the open space. The green light flicked back on, and Edi let out a sigh of relief she hadn’t realized she was holding. She set the plating back in place and jumped a little when the fasteners around it clicked into place. She smoothed the skin back down over it, watching with wonder as the repair programs began sealing it, smoothing it seamlessly together. She pulled the gloves back off and set them down next to the brackets. Then, she replaced his hat, just because it felt right.

Joker remained still long enough for her to start worrying. Had she done something wrong? Had Cerberus planned for this and installed some awful countermeasure? Did they ruin things irreparably by even trying this? She bent down a little and searched his face for any sign that he was waking up, not knowing what else to do. The drive towers around them created a hollow sort of silence.

 At long last, his eyes opened, and he looked at her like he couldn’t believe she was real.

“Thank you,” he whispered, his voice raw with unexpected sincerity. His arms wrapped gently around her and pulled her close, and he buried his face in her shoulder.

“Are you alright?” she asked softly.

“I’m so good,” he chuckled. “Better than I’ve been in a long, long time.”

She ran a hand along his back, treasuring the feeling of being so close. His arms rested solidly on her shoulders, like he wasn’t afraid of breaking her. It made sense, after all this time. He knew what she could handle; he knew she was meant to be _here_ instead of stuck in a bubble getting her bones scanned.

 When he drew back, she held on tighter. The fabric of his shirt slipped from under her fingertips, and it felt like losing him. She wanted to stay like this, without thinking about the fact that Shepard was going to take the Normandy back to the Alliance once repairs were done, and definitely without thinking about what the Alliance would do with the only known living organic human.

Her concern must have shown on her face, because he looked saddened by her expression. One of his hands slid gently along her jawline, and he pulled her close to kiss her.

She brought one leg up for balance without really thinking, bending her knee so she could lean forward. It pressed them even closer together than she’d intended, but it was worth it to feel his hair brushing over her fingers, the soft scratch of his beard contrasting with the smoothness of his lips. When she moved back to breathe, the gravity of the situation seemed to settle on them both.

“Is this okay?” he asked, putting a questioning hand on her thigh where it rested beside his.

“More than okay,” she whispered. Behind them, she could feel cool air begin to fill the room again, but she had never felt so warm.

\--

Surprisingly, Shepard was not greeted by Glyph this time, but by Liara. She wasted no time, turning them around, pushing her up against the now-closed door, and kissing her with enough force to throw off her balance programming. She stumbled, her knee hitting the door a little too hard, but she didn’t care. She couldn’t remember being this happy in her life.

“I love you,” she whispered against Liara’s lips. “I love you, I love you, I love you.”

“Shepard,” Liara whimpered, wrapping her arms around her like she never wanted to let go. They stayed that way for a long moment, pressed against each other but not nearly close enough, until finally Liara drew back.

“Goddess,” she said breathlessly, “you really did it.”

Shepard just nodded, her verbal synthesis failing. There was so much hope in Liara’s eyes that for a moment, she was tempted to let herself believe she had succeeded – that everything really was alright.

 “I imagine you have quite the story to tell,” she murmured. She brushed gently at Shepard’s mind, a query that couldn’t be quantified with numbers that Shepard never thought she would feel again.

She granted it, resting their foreheads together gently, and only then were they close enough. She felt tears at the corner of her eyes, and with it a torrent of relief that crashed over them. Liara brushed them away with a loving smile, sweeping her thumb over Shepard’s cheek - now smooth and unscarred, finally whole.


End file.
